Offseason checklist: Toronto Maple Leafs

Matthews is coming off a quiet year by his standards but he still averaged well over a point per game while picking up 40 goals.  Still not too shabby overall.  Before that, the 25-year-old led the league in goals for two straight seasons, picking up the Hart Trophy for his efforts.  He’s above average at the faceoff dot.  He receives Selke votes annually as the best defensive forward.  Basically, Matthews is a true number-one center.  There aren’t many at his level around the league and they get paid.  At this point, the expectation is that he will set the new benchmark as the highest-paid player in the league, surpassing Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon ($12.6M).  The questions are how much will he pass MacKinnon by and for how long?

Matthews didn’t sign a max-term agreement coming off his entry-level contract and it’s reasonable to think he could try a similar approach here, working out a medium-term agreement that might keep the AAV slightly lower while setting him up for what would likely be another raise down the road where he could once again try to set the new AAV record.

While some have suggested that July 1st represents a key deadline in discussions, that isn’t really the case.  At that point, Matthews picks up a full no-move clause and becomes harder to trade.  But if preliminary talks between his camp and Treliving have gone well and it seems like a matter of when and not if he signs an extension, Matthews having the NMC doesn’t really move the needle much.  It might not get done the first day possible but this should get done this summer.

As for Nylander, the 27-year-old followed up a career-best 80 points in 2021-22 with an even better showing this past season, tallying 40 goals for the first time along with 47 assists, also a new personal best.  He’s in the top 15 for points by a winger over the last three seasons, cementing himself as a true top-line winger in the process.  Others in that top 15 that have signed recently are Minnesota’s Kirill Kaprizov ($9M), Florida’s Matthew Tkachuk ($9.5M), and Columbus’ Johnny Gaudreau ($9.75M).  It’s safe to suggest that Nylander’s next contract should fall somewhere within that range, especially with the expectation that the cap will rise more next summer.

Can Toronto afford extensions for both players?  That will be hard to do but it would also be very tough to part ways with one of those core pieces and maximize their value in return.  With that in mind, it might be a situation where the Maple Leafs extend both and then try to figure out how to fit them in on the books for 2024-25 and beyond later on.

Add An Impact Defenseman

Despite the fact that Toronto was one of the stingier teams in the league in goals allowed, there’s a well-defined hole on the back end to try to fill.  At the moment, the Maple Leafs have six blueliners under contract already for next season which isn’t bad.  However, three of them have question marks.

Mark Giordano was solid for most of the season but started to wear down toward the end and into the playoffs.  He’ll be 40 on opening night and is likely best utilized on the third pairing next season.  Timothy Liljegren hasn’t spent a lot of time in the top four, nor has Conor Timmins who has all of 66 games under his belt, most of which came with limited ice time.  It’s believed they’d like to bring Luke Schenn back but even he’s more of a role piece, not an impact one.

Morgan Rielly, T.J. Brodie, and Jake McCabe are a decent core group in their top four but there is a definite need to add someone that can play 20 minutes a game and kill penalties.  Basically, fill the role that Jake Muzzin was supposed to but with there being questions about his playing future, they can’t rely on hoping that he’s able to come back in prime form (if he’s able to come back at all).  In a perfect world, that player would be a right-shot blueliner but those are always in short supply and high demand.  Either way, a stable second-pairing defender would go a long way toward helping keep this team battling for the top of the division.

Goaltending Decisions

Last summer, former GM Kyle Dubas opted to make a pair of moves to overhaul Toronto’s goaltending.  One worked well, the other not so much.  Treliving now faces decisions on what to do with both of those netminders.

First, the good.  Ilya Samsonov was somewhat surprisingly non-tendered by Washington as they chose to go a different direction with Darcy Kuemper coming over in free agency.  Samsonov wound up on a one-year, $1.8M deal and became one of the better bargains in goal around the league.  His market value now with a strong season under his belt starts to creep up into the $4.5M to $5M range.  Giving him that price tag on a multi-year deal would shore up the goaltending position for a few seasons but it would also cut into Treliving’s spending options for this summer.

Then there’s Matt Murray.  He had some good moments and some bad ones but most of all, he had plenty of times when he was injured.  By the time he was cleared to return for the playoffs, he was relegated to third-string duty behind Joseph Woll.  He has one year left on his contract with Toronto’s portion being $4.6785M.  Having him and Samsonov (likely at a similar price tag) on the books is an option they probably can’t afford, especially with a now waiver-eligible Woll waiting in the wings on a contract that’s below the league minimum for the next two years.

Murray’s contract is one that won’t be easy to offload; it would require an incentive and the Maple Leafs don’t exactly have a surplus of draft picks and prospects at their disposal to help make that happen.  Alternatively, they can choose to buy out the final year of Murray’s deal.  Doing that would save $4M on the books for next season.  However, it would also add $2M in dead cap space for 2024-25 at a time when they’ll need every penny to afford the new deals for Matthews and Nylander.  The other option would be to bury him in the minors, a move that would save $1.15M in space for next season with no cap charges for 2024-25.

With Samsonov, the choice is fairly simple – how long of a contract do they want to do?  For Murray, it’s a much different case, deciding which of three bad options is the least painful route to take.