Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends.
And happy… For Toronto Maple Leafs fans waiting with thumbs twitching for the next game on Friday, it’s goodbye to Weird Sweden this week.
Obviously, there’s been a lot of attention on William Nylander lately, and as a result, we may be reaching a saturation point in how much we can talk about his play and, yes, his contract situation.
But a lot of the conversations around him feel a little alarming to me. Every time he has a big game, people put up bigger and bigger numbers. What I wanted to do here is stick to the facts, keeping in mind his two goals:
1. Find a good comparison for his new contract, given his strong start to the season, salary cap increase, and other mitigating factors.
2. Find a way to fit the resulting contract into the Leafs’ ever-crowded cap sheet in 2024-25 and beyond.
Does it make sense? good.
Comparable to Nylander
Lately, whenever I’ve done a comparative analysis of Nylander and his next contract, Nashville Predators star Filip Forsberg has always been at the top of the list.
In July 2022, Forsberg signed an eight-year contract for $68 million, which carries an $8.5 million cap hit, making him the 43rd-largest contract in the NHL.
At the time of his signing, Forsberg was 27 years old and had played in 566 games, scoring 220 goals and scoring 469 points.
Nylander, 27 years old, entered this season with 177 points and 430 points in 521 games.
So, if you expand Forsberg’s contract by the amount the cap is scheduled to rise next season, a reasonable offer to Nylander would be about $9.1 million per season. right?
What’s missing is how dramatically Nylander is trending into development, and Forsberg’s past, playing fewer games and performing slower than his compatriot in recent seasons. It also overlooks the fact that Mr. Forsberg is underpaid among his peers.
If we were to prorate Nylander’s current blistering pace and put him near 100 points by the end of the season, he would have scored at least one point per game in each of the past five seasons.
That alone puts him in the league’s top 25 offensive players and could reach UFA status on July 1st. It looks like that ranking will be upgraded to the top 15 by next spring.
Scorers in that class don’t make $8.5 million per season. The top 11 forwards in the NHL currently make more than $10 million. The next eight are worth more than $9.5 million.
For now, that’s Nylander’s company. He is expected to have a cap hit of $87.6 million in 2024-25, compared to a contract with an eight-figure AAV.
Add in Nylander, who could have a 50-goal, 100-point season this year, and comparable teams will take some distance from Forsberg.
Are there any other names that show up as closer? David Pastrnak and his cap hit at $11.25 million. Or Jonathan Huberdeau ($10.5 million), Johnny Gaudreau ($9.75 million), Patrick Kane ($10.5 million in 2014), and Matthew Tkachuk ($9.5 million).
Including Forsberg’s relatively cheap contract, this group currently consists of six comparable players who would be a good fit for Nylander. On the other hand, the average cap percentage they received in his contract is a respectable 12.5%.
That equates to just under $11 million next season.
Now, one could rightly argue that Pastrnak and Cain belong to different demographics and should not serve as a meaningful direct comparison. But it’s much harder to make that claim about her other four.
Huberdeau and Gaudreau, in particular, have edged Nylander in recent years, and the gap is likely to widen by the end of this race.
Therefore, the correct numbers would start at 10.
How much can the Leafs afford to pay?
I think this is more than most people expected a year ago. But Nylander is a different player entering the 2022-23 season.
Be more determined. More consistent elements. Despite the team’s lack of continued success, they are even more dominant in the postseason. We spent even more time lining up night after night.
But can the Leafs reach such a big number considering they’re already paying Auston Matthews, John Tavares and Mitch Marner a combined $35.15 million next year? Will someone have to go to reconcile the calculations?
necessarily.
What works in the Leafs’ favor is that they could get a ton of money off the books at the end of this season. The cap will increase by more than $4 million, and Toronto will add John Klingberg, Tyler Bertuzzi, Ilya Samsonov, Max Domi and T.J. Brody.
No one other than Nylander is actually scheduled for a significant raise. Matthews’ third contract bump will cost him $1.6 million starting next year, but at this point it’s hard to see big paydays for RFAs like Timothy Liljegren or Nick Robertson.
So by paying Nylander an additional $3 million or so above what was available at the time, assuming everyone eventually returns, the Leafs could effectively take advantage of the $4.17 million cap increase and replace their core four. That would offset most of the larger share.
Here are the Leafs’ cap expenses for 2024-25: Nylander took the majority, with several RFAs signed to reasonable bridge deals.
There are obviously some key holes in this lineup, but the Leafs still need to spend $19.7 million to fill them.
Perhaps they could go cheap on the goal, allowing Woll to continue playing regularly, while also getting interested in who the next Samsonov could be? Perhaps they can convince Brody to come back with a fancy haircut?
And maybe next year’s version of Bertuzzi and Domi will sell for less than $8.5 million? On the other hand, stepping down from Mr. Klingberg and demoting Mr. Reeves could easily free him up to an additional $5.3 million in misallocated space.
Nylander’s strong start to the season likely raised his asking price, but adding $1 million to that doesn’t fundamentally change the Leafs’ financial situation. And things should only get better once Tavares’ $11 million contract expires in the summer of 2025, especially if he’s willing to return with a hometown discount in the mold of Jason Spezza and Mark Giordano. Especially if there is.
It looks like the Leafs finally have a few low-cost players with regular minutes, which puts much less pressure on the cap and finding hidden gems in the bargain bin. .
Paying Nylander doesn’t ruin their short-term plans. Perhaps the contract has been extended into the mid-30s and may not have aged too well, but it’s hard to imagine there will be any issues over the next few seasons with Matthews locked up.
Even if Tavares declines with age and Marner remains a free agent in 2025, Matthews and Nylander’s cap total is around $24 million, enough to allow them to consistently contend. It will be a one-two punch. Caps quickly climb into the high 90s.
So I’m not really into people asking for more than $12 million for Nylander, or the idea that the more points Nylander scores, the less likely he is to return. The most likely outcome here is that his prolific start motivates the Leafs and he gets closer to the numbers they wanted in the offseason, forcing both teams to a compromise, and if he starts If I had struggled, it might have been more difficult to reach.
The Leafs will have some worrisome things to address on their roster both now and next summer, but Nylander’s fit shouldn’t be an insurmountable problem.
For that, they can simply listen to teddy kgb.
(Photo: Nick Turchiaro/USA Today)
