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Maple Leafs Stuck with Cap Mess, Rival Teams Say ‘No Thanks’
The Toronto Maple Leafs have a salary cap dilemma and NHL teams aren’t lining up to help them out of it. Now what?
The Toronto Maple Leafs have a salary cap dilemma that not many NHL teams are eager to help them solve. According to David Pagnotta of Daily Faceoff Live, the Leafs are looking for upgrades on their blue line, but their tagging issues for next season are standing in the way of them doing anything significant.
Until they move out guys who have contracts that continue beyond this season, there’s not much they can do. He believes Toronto has been shopping names like Dakota Joshua and Miles Wood, but no one is biting. They’ve been looking for a top-four caliber defenseman; they haven’t been able to do it because the guys they’ve been looking at have term.
The tagging issue, for those unfamiliar, relates to next season’s cap totals. Leafs have been unable to make moves due to their projected roster for next season already being right up against the salary cap. “It limits what [Toronto’s] trying to do. It limits what they want to do,” says Pagnotta.
Jeff Marek then joked, asking the rhetorical question, ‘You mean nobody wants to help the Maple Leafs out?’
Pagnotta name-dropped Simon Edvinsson, whom they wouldn’t even be able to pull off this season if they signed him after acquiring him. Toronto certainly couldn’t add $9-$10 million for next year to their books. That means dumping players first and NHL teams aren’t taking on the Leafs cap problems, and certainly not without a massive sweetener attached.
The Maple Leafs are essentially stuck. They either only acquire players on expiring deals that fit into their current cap situation or they move out a player with term first. Even then, they’d have to move a lot of salary to make a blockbuster move.
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