Leafs Shopping Matt Martin?

I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I’ve ever been a big Matt Martin fan. It’s not that I’m against fighting in hockey, it’s that I’m against paying Matt Martin $2.5M a year to do so.

The reality is that Martin has been valuable in his role as veteran guiding the young Leafs off the ice, and he’s certainly been established as a good guy in the room. Again, not something I’m comfortable with the Leafs spending $2.5M a year on when they could hire a really friendly assistant coach or get a keg of beer and avoid the cap hit.

Before I continue to undersell Matt Martin, we’ll look at why we’re talking about Matt Martin…

Matt Martin is apparently on the block, and at a price that is pretty affordable to a lot of teams.

We have just gone through a day that saw the following:

That’s a lot of money for slightly better versions of what Matt Martin brings. There are also teams like the Rangers that were supposedly in on both Komarov and Reaves that might still be looking for something along the lines of what they do.

Let’s also look at what Martin is as a means to get to the cap but not spend to the cap. The fact that Martin has double the cap hit from his actual salary means something to teams like Arizona, Ottawa, Florida, as well as the Islanders, who now face an uphill battle in getting to the cap floor.

The reality is that whether there is interest or not, there isn’t going to be a huge return on Matt Martin. We aren’t going to see some magical Ryan Reaves situation where Martin is spun into a late first round pick by being bundled with a 2nd. The Leafs will clear Matt Martin because ultimately they have to. Next season that $2.5M can’t be a reason for needing to choose between Nylander or Marner. Whether it’s now or 12 months from now, it’s got to happen and right now there seems like there is potentially a market.

It seems greedy to push for the Leafs to take more action this summer after gifting us all John Tavares, but there is a lot of summer left, and there is still a lot of tweaking to the roster that can benefit the Leafs now and in the future, so it’s exciting to see that the wheels are in motion on Matt Martin.

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