Have the Leafs been putting Nylander’s signing on hold to save money?

This could be one of the most brilliant strategy from the new young GM…

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 5 years ago
Have the Leafs been putting Nylander’s signing on hold to save money?
Zuma Press

You know it, we know it, they know it: the Toronto Maple Leafs have until Dec. 1st to re-sign young free agent William Nylander to a contract. The dispute has been going on for months, but general manager Kyle Dubas has already remained calm about the situation, stating that his most important priority was to keep Nylander on his roster. 

It is also well-known that Dubas has quite a complex financial puzzle coming up in the summer, as he needs to re-sign Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews after he gave a lucrative seven-year contract to his new star player John Tavares. Because of all that math, many still believe that Dubas will have to let go one of his free agents, however, NHL Insider Bob McKenzie has revealed how the Maple Leafs might be able to keep everyone in Toronto. 

If Nylander fails to sign with the Maple Leafs by today, he stands to forfeit 25 per cent of this season’s salary due to games missed. That number will continue grow as the two sides progress toward the Dec. 1 deadline. 

McKenzie explained during Tuesday’s edition of Insider Trading that the Maple Leafs could stand to benefit from an advantage in the salary cap the longer they wait to sign Nylander.

With the numbers provided by CapFriendly, McKenzie noted that if the Leafs had signed Nylander to a six-year, $7 million contract on Tuesday his cap hit this season would have stood at $8.7 million, but drop to $6.7 million in years two through six. If the team waits until Nov. 30 to sign the winger to the same deal, his cap hit would rise to $9.6 million in Year 1, but drop to $6.6 million in each of the remaining years.


That way, the Leafs could benefit from lowering Nylander’s cap hit in the future as they could focus it more on Matthews and Marner. 

If William Nylander chooses to have a contract where the salary is really low in the first year, then it negates that benefit, which is benefit for the Leafs, and negates that theory that says the first year has a higher cap hit and the other years are lower,” McKenzie said on TSN 1050 Toronto.

“You can manipulate this around depending on what you want and, in fact, if William Nylander said to the Leafs, ‘You know what? I don’t really want to pay a penalty for missing the first two months of the season, so why don’t you give me a big, huge signing bonus in my first year and hardly any salary and that will make me whole. I won’t have missed any time (for salary purposes).’ The Leafs would be not inclined to do that for the reason that the cap hit wouldn’t be larger in the first year and smaller in the remaining years. It would offset that advantage.”

The thing is that Nylander may now be looking for a large signing bonus this year to off-set his games missed, which would diminish the salary cap advantage for the Leafs… so the dispute might keep going. 

While this could be a winning strategy for the Leafs, McKenzie was quick to point out that the Leafs have not been doing this on purpose and it was never the way they wanted things to unfold with the free agent. 

“I should point out, even though this situation exists, this has not been the strategy for the Toronto Maple Leafs. There are some people who think, ‘Oh yeah, Kyle Dubas knew that if he waited until the end of November…’ It’s nonsense. The Leafs wanted to get this guy signed long ago and this is not a strategy,” McKenzie said.

Let’s see what will work in the end…