Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas has done a great job of creating cap space for his team, and it’s allowed him to re-sign a pair of trade acquisitions in Alex Kerfoot and Cody Ceci.
Per TSN’s Darren Dreger, Kerfoot has inked a four-year, $14 million extension ($3.5 million AAV) with the club and Ceci has signed a one-year, $4.5 million contract. Before these two deals were handed out, the Leafs had just over $11 million in cap space. Once these two contracts are made official, they’ll be down to roughly $3.765 million in cap space.
Kerfoot is expected to serve as the third line center for the Leafs heading into this year. Last year, that spot was occupied by Nazem Kadri, who made $4.5 million per year, so there’s a $1 million savings there. As for Ceci, he’ll serve as a replacement for Nikita Zaitsev, who was also making $4.5 million but on a long-term contract. So even though there’s no cap relief this year, there could be some coming in the near future.
The Leafs, of course, still have one more player they need to re-sign and he’s going to be expensive too. So what kind of money to they have left over for Mitch Marner?
We mentioned the $3.765 million in cap space they currently have, but that number will increase once they put Nathan Horton’s $5.3 million cap hit on long-term injured reserve. That puts them back close $9 million in available cap space.
Including Kerfoot and Marner, Toronto has 14 forwards under contract. They’ll likely be sending at least one of those extra bodies down to the minors, which means another $700,000 could be coming off the books. They also have eight defenseman on the roster, so they can opt to carry seven guys if they wanted to.
[ProHockeyTalk’s 2019 NHL free agency tracker]
So let’s recap the cap situation:
The Leafs currently have $3.765 million available to spend. They’ll put Nathan Horton’s $5.3 million hit on LTIR ($9.065 million in available space after that move is made). They can also send two players making roughly $700,000 each to the AHL without them counting on the cap. That would give them $10.465 million in available funds to spend on Marner. Will that be enough? No one can say for sure, but it’s in the ball park.
The team will look different when it hits the ice next year, but we always knew that was going to be the case because of the salaries they already had on the books. Dubas has done a good job of improving the roster as a whole while leaving himself some money to play with to make sure he could bring back key parts, too.
Now they just have to iron a contract out with Marner.
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Joey Alfieri is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @joeyalfieri.