TORONTO — There are a couple things keeping the Toronto Maple Leafs from tearing it all down. And by “things,” I mean of course, people. Those people are Auston Matthews and William Nylander, and, if you squint, Matthew Knies.
It’s hard to get stars, and none of these guys have yet turned 30, and so with the good regular-season goaltending we know they’re able to get from Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll, they’ve at least got a few important pillars of successful teams in place.
If they blew it up — meaning traded Matthews and Nylander — the Leafs would spend years bottoming out and drafting high in hopes of even getting one of those quality players back any time soon. It could be a years-long journey, and so before you do that, you should at least see if you can’t build around the guys you currently have and see if you can’t get everything to line up just so. Before you go full rebuild, you have to exhaust all other options.
So, it’s a retool then, is it?
Let’s talk about how realistic it is for the Leafs to get themselves back in the playoff picture next season, and how that should affect what they do at the deadline.
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The salary cap this season is set at $95.5 million, and as of today, the Leafs sit almost exactly $10 million below that cap. Next season, only one player is set to get a raise, that being Stolarz, who goes from $2.5 million to $3.75 million. Chris Tanev comes off IR, but not all of his cap hit is on LTIR, so it adds only $3.8 million to their cap hit.
That leaves them well below the cap limit, and that salary cap? It’s shooting up to something around $104 million. If the Leafs move on from Morgan Rielly, which seems quite possible, there’s another $7.5 million they’ll have to play with.
If they’re serious about turning it around next season and competing, they may find themselves in a spot where they’ve got piles of cap space (after years of the complete opposite), yet not enough good players to give it to (after years of the complete opposite).
Which is to say, the idea of trading Oliver Ekman-Larsson may not make the most sense. I’ve advocated for the Leafs to be “over-sellous” very recently, and I did so because I’m at least a little skeptical this “retool” is going to be able to work. As I explained in that piece, you’re probably better off just getting a pile of assets and hoping for a few things to break your way: that you can sign some decent UFAs at the cost of no assets (you can overpay Darren Raddysh, for example), or that some great players want a change of scenery (Adam Fox?), and you’ve now got the assets to acquire those guys.
But that’s just the way I’ve been thinking about it big picture, and that way doesn’t exactly honour the idea of the quick fix they apparently want. If the Leafs are serious about contending next season, it’s hard to imagine they can find a better fit of a D-man than OEL (and his two additional years of term makes him flippable next year anyway). It’s tough to imagine doing better than Scott Laughton or Bobby McMann in the UFA market, and since you’re not trying to get worse, I can see a world where management sees fit to extend one or both.
For whatever many think is the long-term forecast of this team, a retool involves needing good players and supplementing around them, not stripping them from the roster.
What a serious attempt to win next year means for the deadline is that you probably part ways with Calle Jarnkrok for a song, and see Matias Maccelli as a borderline giveaway, and you see if you can’t grab a couple other picks for fringe pieces that you see as outright replaceable (maybe that’s Simon Benoit, for example).
From there, what you’re selling is that everything that could go wrong did, and that next year will be different.
You’re hoping that your weird start with goaltending this season doesn’t happen again. You’re hoping that Nylander stays healthy for 82 games like he usually does, and that a long summer brings back 50-goal threat Auston Matthews. You’re hoping a first dose of skepticism about Knies motivates him this summer, and that Brandon Carlo’s ankle is better and he has a bounce-back season.
You’re hoping the return of Tanev changes the look of your D-corps entirely.
The other question is what a different coach might do for the group. I think it’s fair to say they haven’t maximized their roster this season, and if you’re hoping for a big turnaround with little change, it’s certainly one of the buttons they have at their disposal to push.
A lot of this I do believe can happen and can help, but the problem is how fine the margin of error is — and you know there’s always unforeseen error. I can’t see Tanev playing 82, or even 72 games next season, can you? With his history, at his age?
You can pick through basically all the notes above and express similar dollops of skepticism.
The next part is just looking at the division around the Leafs, and assessing the state of those teams:
Ottawa: Elite underlying numbers undone by goaltending, likely gonna be better next year with even average goaltending.
Montreal: Running with a red-hot shooting percentage this year, but so talented they should be a home-ice playoff team the next few years at least.
Detroit: Playoff team and getting better, about to add at deadline.
Sabres: Finally arrived and buying at the deadline.
Florida: Reloading to go back for a third Cup next year, who would bet against them?
Tampa Bay: Stacked division champs bringing back roughly everyone next year.
Boston: Maybe the only team in a similar spot as the Leafs, except they have five first-round picks the next three years to play with.
If the Leafs have everything go right next season, they’re still going to need help. So while I’ve advocated for selling — because I’m looking big picture — you can see how they’d talk themselves into the opposite.
As they move toward this deadline, I see a team with a management group banking on a whole bunch of bounce-backs with little change. There are days ahead for me to be proven wrong in that guess, but with a fanbase hungry for action, for a clear direction, for a pulse, it seems to be shaping up for a mighty dull Leafs-based trade season.
The team wants to go back at it next year, and with the pillars they have, you can see why. I may be skeptical, you may be skeptical, hell, they may be skeptical, but the Leafs feel like they at least have to try. And with that in mind, trying may look like not doing a whole heck of a lot.
