William Nylander has re-signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs, and it is a whopper of a deal. The dynamic winger put pen to paper on a deal that is reportedly worth $92 million in total value and is the most lucrative contract in Maple Leaf history. Nylander signed for the maximum length of eight years, meaning the Swede’s cap hit will come in at $11.5 million each season. The contract is loaded with bonuses, $69 million worth, giving the Leafs some extra flexibility and further indicating the franchise’s economic might. However, that is about as much of an advantage as Toronto gets from being one of the league’s richest teams due to the NHL’s hard cap.
Nylander’s AAV of $11.5 million won’t help matters for a team already in figurative cap hell and is a far cry from what people expected #88 to get just a few months ago. If you thought that the days of Toronto giving their stars whatever they wanted were over with the release of Kyle Dubas, you were sorely mistaken. Nylander had all the leverage here, and he wasn’t going to be the one to take a discount. But just because Brad Treliving gave Nylander more than anticipated doesn’t mean it was a bad deal. The Leafs have created this reality for themselves and are responsible for the consequences. In this case, the consequence is that you ensured that one of the best players in the NHL this season would continue to play for your team for the next eight years. No matter how hard people might try, it is difficult to frame that as a bad thing for the Leafs.
Letting Nylander walk, especially after the season he is having so far, would’ve rightly been seen as a colossal failure by this management group. It’s hard to understate just how good he has been this season, tied for fifth in the league in points, eleventh in goals, and top 20 in each of these key offensive stats. He also leads the league in 5v5 points per 60 minutes.
Auston Matthews is the Leafs’ best player, that’s inarguable, but Nylander has potentially been their most important this season, often dragging the team behind him to wins (The game against Detroit in Sweden springs to mind). Interestingly, his underlying stats aren’t much different from last season; if anything, they’re worse, but make no mistake, there is something different about Nylander’s game this season.
To the eye, he’s more authoritative in his decision-making and has been consistently focused throughout games, rarely letting one pass him by without making an impact. The winger has points in 33 games this season, which is the most in the NHL, and has point streaks of seventeen and thirteen games. Furthermore, Willy Styles’s best season to date has been all the more important to Toronto due to the poor, by his standards, play of Mitch Marner. Marner hasn’t played anywhere near the level his nearly $11 million cap hit suggests, and it has gotten to the point where the only reasonable explanation is an undisclosed injury.
Nonetheless, Nylander has been there to pick up the slack and is rewarded for it with this deal.
The astronomically sized elephant in the room is that the Leafs, starting next season, will have four (4!) forwards making eight figures and four of the top ten highest AAV’s in the league. No other team in the salary cap era has ever had more than one forward making $10 million or more. There is the double-edged sword aspect to it all: the Leafs have four elite forwards, which is great, but they have to pay them all, which is less great. Oh, and they also have the only four forwards in the league who refuse to even think about the words “hometown discount.” A gift and a curse.
In all seriousness, I don’t blame the players for getting every cent they think they deserve; it’s their career, and it’s their right. It is up to the general manager to keep the number as low as possible. The Leafs could have tried to re-sign Nylander in the summer when he almost certainly would’ve cost a million or two less than he does now, but they didn’t. Maybe that wasn’t an option, but it didn’t really seem like they even tried. The deal they signed him to now is not a horrible one. Nylander is too good of a player to act like $11.5 million is something ghastly. But the reality remains that this could have been cheaper for Toronto, and it wasn’t. Just like it wasn’t with Marner and Matthews.
The good news for the Leafs is that the cap is going up next season and will continue to go up as the NHL gets further and further away from the pandemic. In fact, the cap is going up $4.2 million next year, which is just $400k less than the raise Nylander receives, going from $6.9 million to $11.5 million.
If there is negativity that stems from Leaf fans reacting to this deal, I understand. Watching players around the league take less than expected and often significantly less than what they could get on the open market to stick with their original team is frustrating, especially when the players on our team straight-up refuse to do so. However, I love William Nylander. I love having him on the Leafs, I love watching him every night, and I love the fact that he will be wearing blue and white until his mid-thirties. He is one of a kind in every sense, and he has gotten better year after year. Willy is not going to fall off a cliff anytime soon.
It is not and should not be our job as fans to worry about how the Leafs will fill out the rest of their roster around their core four. That is up to Mr. Treliving and Mr. Shannahan. They have been gifted an elite core that guarantees the team a playoff spot every year. Now, they must do their job and fill out the rest of the roster! We will worry about roster construction in the summer. Now that Nylander is signed, all eyes can be turned to the Leafs’ push for a Stanley Cup, and #88 will undoubtedly be integral to that push.
The Morning Skate 