Toronto Maple Leafs

What If the Maple Leafs Can’t Get Under the NHL’s Salary Cap?

The Toronto Maple Leafs are over the limits of the NHL’s salary cap. What if they can’t find other teams to take excess players’ salaries?

by
Old Prof
August 7, 2022

There’s a potential nightmare looming for the NHL and teams like the Toronto Maple Leafs. While this nightmare hasn’t happened yet, there’s no reason why it can’t.

The NHL’s Hard Salary Cap Is in Place to Create an Equitable League

The NHL’s hard salary cap is in place to prevent the richer teams (and the Maple Leafs are one of them) from spending whatever they please to load their team with talent, thus giving them an advantage over the small market teams that do not have the same resources as bigger market teams.

Auston Matthews Mitch Marner Maple Leafs — Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner take up a huge portion of the Maple Leafs’ salary cap

Every season we see teams at the top of the standings (and some that aren’t) having to shed players and their salaries to get under the salary cap for the next season. The stagnant salary cap caused by a worldwide pandemic has made that job harder. There’s been a huge loss of revenue because for a long time no fans were in the stands. It’s been hard to claw back.

Are “Have” Teams Taking Advantage of “Have-Not” Teams?

To this point, the “have” teams have been able to use (take advantage of) the “have not teams.” They have enticed the poorer teams to take some of their castoffs by adding other incentives to the deal such as draft choices and good prospects.

Kyle Dubas Petr Mrazek Maple Leafs — Kyle Dubas was able to entice the Chicago Blackhawks to take on Petr Mrazek’s contract at the NHL Draft

While the salary cap does prevent teams from spending an infinite amount of dollars on salary, it still doesn’t create complete equality in the league. There are still teams that struggle to make ends meet. These teams have their internal salary caps. Just because a team is allowed by the NHL to spend up to $82.5 million in 2022-23 in players’ salaries it doesn’t mean they can necessarily afford to do so.

Some NHL Teams Are Playing to Half-Filled Arenas

The Ottawa Senators and the Buffalo Sabres averaged less than 10,000 people per game last season. That is half, or less than half of what the top teams are getting for attendance. The Arizona Coyotes just signed a contract to play in a 5,000-seat stadium for the next three seasons.

There are plenty of teams in the NHL that are not playing to sell-out or near sell-out crowds. While the league shares the TV revenues equally, the total that each team gets from that revenue is estimated to be slightly less than $20 million annually. That accounts for less than one-quarter of the present salary cap.

Some Huge Questions Loom for Teams Like the Maple Leafs

All this brings to light these questions:

What if there were no place for the high-spending teams to ship their salary-cap overages to?
What if the smaller teams that have been willing and able to absorb these salaries all of a sudden can’t afford to, or are simply not willing to, take on these “castoff” contracts?
Then what do these teams do?

After looking at each team’s salary cap situation on the website Capfriendly.com, it appears there are presently nine teams over the league salary cap. There are eight teams right at the salary cap, and six teams between $2 million and $5 million under the cap.

That leaves nine teams with cap space of $5 million or more. Note: that NHL teams are allowed to go 10% or $8.25 million over the salary cap in the offseason. By day one of the regular season, every team must be under or at the $82.5 million salary cap.

Will the Maple Leafs have to waive Adam Gaudette before the season begins?

Fifteen teams in the league presently have players on Long-Term Disability, which allows them to use the cap space that would usually be taken up by these players and some of those players that are on LTIR will never come off of it.

But, the majority of them will at some point in time. Some will be healthy enough to go at the start of the season causing their teams to lose that cap space.

At Some Point, Poorer Teams Might Balk at Taking on More Salary

At some point in time, things might have to give. There are only so many places and so many teams where teams over the salary cap can turn to dump salaries. What happens when a team that is over the salary cap simply cannot find a willing taker for their salary overage?

Until now, it’s always worked out. Since the advent of the NHL salary cap in 2004, every team in the league that has been over the league salary cap has been able to find a way back to the cap.

What happens when a team like the Maple Leafs can’t?

[As a note, I want to thank long-time Maple Leafs’ fan Stan Smith for his insights. He’s largely responsible for the content and background thinking for this post. Stan brings many ideas to the foreground that I don’t think of. We have been collaborating regularly with the site The Hockey Writers for about a year. I appreciate his knowledge of the Maple Leafs. Thanks, Stan.]