The Toronto Maple Leafs’ salary cap situation this upcoming season

With the preseason starting later this month, finally, NHL hockey returns. General manager Brad Treliving has made several moves and signings this offseason, most of which are decent gambles. It will be a different Toronto Maple Leafs team that fans are used to, with many new faces in possible roster combinations to start the season.

But leading up to this, the Leafs, for the first time in a very long time, have cap space heading into the season. Let’s take a look at the Leafs’ cap situation and how they could utilize it in various scenarios.

The salary cap situation

Whether Mitch Marner was a problem or not, the Leafs will continue to build on a successful year one under Craig Berube and hopefully go on a deep playoff run for the first time in the Matthews era. 

As of writing this article, the Leafs have $1.92M in cap space to enter the season. This is with a full 23-man roster, utilizing 46 of 50 contract spots, and with all three retention spots remaining. As a playoff-contending team, the Leafs are in excellent shape.

The status quo option for the Leafs is to go the entire season with their current roster and make no NHL transactions. The Leafs have enough NHL extras on forward and defence to weather potential injuries, especially come the playoffs. Furthermore, according to PuckPedia, if the Leafs make zero transactions, this translates to $8.78M in deadline cap space.

There is, of course, the possibility that the roster meshes extremely well and blows the season expectations out of the water. However, this is extremely unlikely, and it is even more unlikely that the Leafs won’t make any transactions, even a minor transaction, before the trade deadline. The more transactions the Leafs make, the lower the deadline cap space becomes.

Still, being able to add almost a $9M player, or several players whose collective cap hit is $9M, come trade deadline is enticing and not a bad place to be. This is a viable upgrade in the top-six or on defence, depending on how the team performs in the season.

Possible changes as the year progresses

Now for the fun part: thinking about possible scenarios that the Leafs could do with their salary cap space. There’s an obvious logjam of bottom-six forwards. Notably, Calle Jarnkrok and/or David Kampf should be traded either before the regular season starts or at the beginning. It’s not necessarily their fault.

Part of it is that we have tried using these players for the past three to four seasons with little success in those positions. The bottom-six has had a hard time scoring in the regular season, and especially in the playoffs. More importantly, their cap space could be utilized more effectively. Their combined cap hit is $4.5M. Combined with the Leafs’ existing space, that works out to just under $6.5M in room.

This, of course, assumes that the Leafs can completely erase their cap hits. These players are serviceable and do carry value, but it is unlikely that a team would trade for them using solely draft picks or prospects. If we assume that the Leafs retain $1.5M in these transactions, the Leafs would have just under $5M of cap space to play with.

The Leafs at this point have several options. Like in the status quo option, they could let cap space accrue and potentially go after a bigger fish at the trade deadline. This is advantageous because there’s a high chance they will get more assets in return for moving Jarnkrok or Kampf.

However, here’s something to be said for obtaining players early and seeing how they integrate with the team. The last thing the Leafs would like to do is spend what little assets they have left on players that just don’t fit well. Every transaction is a gamble, of course. But obtaining them early enough allows the team to course-correct if necessary.

Time will tell

Time will tell what the Leafs will do with their cap space. Either way, Treliving doesn’t seem like the type of general manager to make a trade for the sake of making a trade; so far, he has shown himself to be methodical in rebuilding the defence and goaltending. I think as the season progresses, whatever holes exist in the lineup will force his hand to fill them.

This doesn’t preclude the Leafs from potentially moving a roster player in a trade. If one of Treliving’s offseason gambles doesn’t work out, then I can’t imagine the player remaining a Leaf. Even an existing roster player like Max Domi or Nicholas Robertson could be moved to improve the team.

Either way, the Maple Leafs are in decent shape heading into the season. For the first time, they have cap space and no longer have to use salary cap gymnastics to remain cap compliant as the year progresses.

But what do you think the Leafs should do with their cap space? Leave a comment below!