For a team like the Toronto Maple Leafs that can spend beyond reason the salary cap increasing and increasing dramatically is a good thing. That seems like something that needs to be said in a post that is largely exploring the negative impacts of the salary cap going up. Every team (that can afford it) is in a far better situation with an increasing salary cap and a team like the Maple Leafs that can comfortably eat LTIR and take on contract years that pay salary above the cap hit, as well as throw around bonus heavy deals in this time is in a better position than even the teams spending to the cap.
The salary cap estimates are in for the next three seasons and come with some heavy caveats:
<ul>
<li>2025-26: $95.5 million</li>
<li>2026-27: $104 million</li>
<li>2027-28: $113.5 million</li>
</ul>
The first caveat is the Canadian dollar. The worse the dollar does the bigger the strain on the Canadian teams and with locked in ticket prices and television deals in Canadian dollars combined with player&#8217;s contracts paid in USD and the declining loonie, there could be some pushback.
The second is the economy. These are uncertain times and no one (other than the sports leagues and their players) seems to be living their best financial life at the moment. There are plenty of catalysts that could effect the ability for the league to generate revenue at a time when people might be buying less merchandise, fewer tickets, fewer concessions purchases, and god forbid, gambling less.
Elliotte Friedman spoke to those first two points briefly on Saturday Night Headlines and while the NHL is certainly living its best life, the same could be said heading into COVID and signing players to contracts based on the assumption the salary cap will spike is not advisable.  (Hi Mitch.)
The third major caveat is the new CBA and the fact that the NHL and NHLPA is jointly sharing these projections doesn&#8217;t point to a contentious lockout or it seems pretty clear the NHL will still be a hard cap league and the major negotiation sticking points have been addressed. What we don&#8217;t know is if the long term injured reserve will exist as it does today, what the ceiling for entry level contracts will look like, and what the new league minimum salary will look like, amongst other things.
Spending money before it&#8217;s there and before a CBA agreement is in place comes with a huge risk. That risk is made bigger by the fact that players and agents are going to start asking for a bigger slice of that future pie. Much like how William Nylander&#8217;s $10M AAV contract demands were labeled as insane heading into the start of the 2023-24 season, it took less than half a year for the Leafs to pay $1.5M AAV above and beyond that.
It seems the Leafs have once again missed the boat on three pending free agents that could have provided some semblance of value and now strategies need to be adapted for the Leafs to fully enjoy the flexibility and upgrading potential of a spiking salary cap.
<h2>Matthew Knies</h2>
Of the major signings the Leafs need to make, Knies is probably still the easiest to resolve and one that should be prioritized as an in-season move. The value with Knies for the Leafs comes with term and given that the current CBA doesn&#8217;t allow for NTC during his remaining RFA years the team still maintains some flexibility with movement if needed. Bending a little to the salary demands of Knies seems reasonable and using someone like Matt Boldy of the Minnesota Wild as an example and applying his 8.38% of the salary cap hit at the signing of his deal to Knies, that would see Knies making $8M annually. That would certainly make Knies one of the highest earners of his draft class and while the increases to come after might result in the number being greater than $8M, $9M would start to be unreasonable. The worst trade off for the Leafs is if Knies wants anything less than 8 years of term, with the exception of him potentially taking one last deal as a restricted free agent.
<h2>John Tavares</h2>
Tavares was never going to be as cheap as people wanted his next deal to be. The numbers that Spezza was putting up before his deep discount or the age of Mark Giordano are nowhere near where Tavares is today and he performs at a level that could easily have him as the top line centre on a number of teams around the league, and his offence at least dictates that he is justifiably an NHL second line centre on a contender, at least for now.
The Leafs do have the leverage from John Tavares wanting to stay put in Toronto but that can&#8217;t result in an insultingly lowball deal. There is also the matter of Tavares&#8217; history and the Islanders certainly believed that Tavares would return only to have him swept off his feet by an offer from the Leafs. I guess don&#8217;t take Tavares forgranted and after a down year in 2023-24, the Leafs are now negotiating against improved numbers and a salary cap where it is easier to carve out a piece of it.
The Leafs and Tavares will make term their friend. The deal will be eight years with some awareness that the last couple of years are unlikely to be played. That helps. The rising cap certainly helps too, but the open market does not. If the Leafs were to pay Tavares like a second line centre for the first three years of his deal (approx. $9M), a third line centre for the next three years of his deal (approx. $5M), and the lowest they can get away with for the last two years (again this is something the CBA could become even more rigid on but we&#8217;ll say $5M combined), it seems reasonable to call it a day at a $5M AAV that everyone can be happy with.
Odds are Tavares can do better than that somewhere else and that&#8217;s where an earlier resolution would likely have been in the Leafs best interest as even players with genuine interest in staying will be curious to test the waters at this point, and Tavares has shown a willingness to do so.
<h2>Mitch Marner</h2>
Everything is always most complicated when it comes to Mitch Marner. The only way things become uncomplicated now is that Brad Treliving and company make their peace with paying Mitch Marner more than Auston Matthews. That would be a bitter pill to swallow but if Marner wants to test the open market, he&#8217;d easily find a team willing to offer him the Draisaitl cap hit of $14M AAV.
Marner is not Matthews. Marner is not Draisaitl. Marner is a pending UFA with a skill level and age that make him a target for being paid better than those players.
Marner isn&#8217;t going to be cheap and perhaps the best course of action is tender an offer of $12.93M AAV now before settling on $13.16M AAV and knowing full well whether or not the Leafs need to plan for life after Mitch.
The Marner situation is complicated. Perhaps the best course of action would have been back in June for Brad Treliving to give Mitch a big vote of confidence after a rough playoff appearance and said, &#8220;we believe in you, and believe in you at $12M AAV for the next eight years.&#8221; There would have been unmeasurable backlash. There still might be a backlash to the idea of Marner getting more than Nylander or being paid in the ballpark of Matthews, but it probably would be understood now. Over the summer it definitely wouldn&#8217;t have been.
Anytime up until the announcement of the projected salary caps would have been the best time to re-sign Mitch Marner, but that has passed and the idea of getting Marner, Knies, and Tavares back for their combined cap hit of $23M AAV is unlikely. The Leafs ability to upgrade has been compromised by the hesitation, and the Leafs are in the situation they always appeared to be with Marner and that&#8217;s debating whether the core works enough to invest heavily in Mitch and what was always promised by the Marner and that is Mitch not signing until next summer, with the possibility of testing the free agency waters.
&nbsp;
To be fair, teams, GMs, players, and agents all could see the writing on the wall and there has never been less incentive to sign early.
The best breaks for the Leafs would be that some team friendly signings occur around the league that set favourable precedents. That hasn&#8217;t worked with Marner in the past but could at least help with Knies and Tavares. The Leafs could also benefit from more players being open to test free agency as a result of the increasing cap. Other than Rantanen there really isn&#8217;t a Marner replacement option but if players like Ehlers, Boeser, Ekblad, and Chychrun are available, at least there is some mitigation.
The Leafs can also take some comfort in the fact that as it sits, this is their last bad year for dealing with re-signings for a while. Their defence are locked in at reasonable prices, addressing a raise for Stolarz won&#8217;t be an issue when that time approaches, and at least on the surface the summer of 2026 looks like a gloriously optimistic time for upgrades. That is assuming a ton of consistency in personnel.
Even with the cap projections in, there should be some incentive to get deals done sooner than later. There is a very real possibility that someone from Knies&#8217; draft year will land a windfall or that someone will like a Claude Giroux, Brad Marchand, or Jamie Benn a little too much for Tavares to achieve his full discount potential. And there is a benefit in certainty of having Marner locked up and part of the Leafs future that has an appeal over going into July 1st where anything could happen. There is little benefit to a &#8220;wait and see&#8221; approach for the Leafs when it comes to these contracts and meeting the players where they are at today might be the best call in the long run.
Data from <a href="http://puckpedia.com">PuckPedia</a>

For a team like the Toronto Maple Leafs that can spend beyond reason the salary cap increasing and increasing dramatically is a good thing. That seems like something that needs to be said in a post that is largely exploring the negative impacts of the salary cap going up. Every team (that can afford it) is in a far better situation with an increasing salary cap and a team like the Maple Leafs that can comfortably eat LTIR and take on contract years that pay salary above the cap hit, as well as throw around bonus heavy deals in this time is in a better position than even the teams spending to the cap.

The salary cap estimates are in for the next three seasons and come with some heavy caveats:
<ul>
 	<li>2025-26: $95.5 million</li>
 	<li>2026-27: $104 million</li>
 	<li>2027-28: $113.5 million</li>
</ul>
The first caveat is the Canadian dollar. The worse the dollar does the bigger the strain on the Canadian teams and with locked in ticket prices and television deals in Canadian dollars combined with player's contracts paid in USD and the declining loonie, there could be some pushback.

The second is the economy. These are uncertain times and no one (other than the sports leagues and their players) seems to be living their best financial life at the moment. There are plenty of catalysts that could effect the ability for the league to generate revenue at a time when people might be buying less merchandise, fewer tickets, fewer concessions purchases, and god forbid, gambling less.

Elliotte Friedman spoke to those first two points briefly on Saturday Night Headlines and while the NHL is certainly living its best life, the same could be said heading into COVID and signing players to contracts based on the assumption the salary cap will spike is not advisable.  (Hi Mitch.)

The third major caveat is the new CBA and the fact that the NHL and NHLPA is jointly sharing these projections doesn't point to a contentious lockout or it seems pretty clear the NHL will still be a hard cap league and the major negotiation sticking points have been addressed. What we don't know is if the long term injured reserve will exist as it does today, what the ceiling for entry level contracts will look like, and what the new league minimum salary will look like, amongst other things.

Spending money before it's there and before a CBA agreement is in place comes with a huge risk. That risk is made bigger by the fact that players and agents are going to start asking for a bigger slice of that future pie. Much like how William Nylander's $10M AAV contract demands were labeled as insane heading into the start of the 2023-24 season, it took less than half a year for the Leafs to pay $1.5M AAV above and beyond that.

It seems the Leafs have once again missed the boat on three pending free agents that could have provided some semblance of value and now strategies need to be adapted for the Leafs to fully enjoy the flexibility and upgrading potential of a spiking salary cap.
<h2>Matthew Knies</h2>
Of the major signings the Leafs need to make, Knies is probably still the easiest to resolve and one that should be prioritized as an in-season move. The value with Knies for the Leafs comes with term and given that the current CBA doesn't allow for NTC during his remaining RFA years the team still maintains some flexibility with movement if needed. Bending a little to the salary demands of Knies seems reasonable and using someone like Matt Boldy of the Minnesota Wild as an example and applying his 8.38% of the salary cap hit at the signing of his deal to Knies, that would see Knies making $8M annually. That would certainly make Knies one of the highest earners of his draft class and while the increases to come after might result in the number being greater than $8M, $9M would start to be unreasonable. The worst trade off for the Leafs is if Knies wants anything less than 8 years of term, with the exception of him potentially taking one last deal as a restricted free agent.
<h2>John Tavares</h2>
Tavares was never going to be as cheap as people wanted his next deal to be. The numbers that Spezza was putting up before his deep discount or the age of Mark Giordano are nowhere near where Tavares is today and he performs at a level that could easily have him as the top line centre on a number of teams around the league, and his offence at least dictates that he is justifiably an NHL second line centre on a contender, at least for now.

The Leafs do have the leverage from John Tavares wanting to stay put in Toronto but that can't result in an insultingly lowball deal. There is also the matter of Tavares' history and the Islanders certainly believed that Tavares would return only to have him swept off his feet by an offer from the Leafs. I guess don't take Tavares forgranted and after a down year in 2023-24, the Leafs are now negotiating against improved numbers and a salary cap where it is easier to carve out a piece of it.

The Leafs and Tavares will make term their friend. The deal will be eight years with some awareness that the last couple of years are unlikely to be played. That helps. The rising cap certainly helps too, but the open market does not. If the Leafs were to pay Tavares like a second line centre for the first three years of his deal (approx. $9M), a third line centre for the next three years of his deal (approx. $5M), and the lowest they can get away with for the last two years (again this is something the CBA could become even more rigid on but we'll say $5M combined), it seems reasonable to call it a day at a $5M AAV that everyone can be happy with.

Odds are Tavares can do better than that somewhere else and that's where an earlier resolution would likely have been in the Leafs best interest as even players with genuine interest in staying will be curious to test the waters at this point, and Tavares has shown a willingness to do so.
<h2>Mitch Marner</h2>
Everything is always most complicated when it comes to Mitch Marner. The only way things become uncomplicated now is that Brad Treliving and company make their peace with paying Mitch Marner more than Auston Matthews. That would be a bitter pill to swallow but if Marner wants to test the open market, he'd easily find a team willing to offer him the Draisaitl cap hit of $14M AAV.

Marner is not Matthews. Marner is not Draisaitl. Marner is a pending UFA with a skill level and age that make him a target for being paid better than those players.

Marner isn't going to be cheap and perhaps the best course of action is tender an offer of $12.93M AAV now before settling on $13.16M AAV and knowing full well whether or not the Leafs need to plan for life after Mitch.

The Marner situation is complicated. Perhaps the best course of action would have been back in June for Brad Treliving to give Mitch a big vote of confidence after a rough playoff appearance and said, "we believe in you, and believe in you at $12M AAV for the next eight years." There would have been unmeasurable backlash. There still might be a backlash to the idea of Marner getting more than Nylander or being paid in the ballpark of Matthews, but it probably would be understood now. Over the summer it definitely wouldn't have been.

Anytime up until the announcement of the projected salary caps would have been the best time to re-sign Mitch Marner, but that has passed and the idea of getting Marner, Knies, and Tavares back for their combined cap hit of $23M AAV is unlikely. The Leafs ability to upgrade has been compromised by the hesitation, and the Leafs are in the situation they always appeared to be with Marner and that's debating whether the core works enough to invest heavily in Mitch and what was always promised by the Marner and that is Mitch not signing until next summer, with the possibility of testing the free agency waters.

&nbsp;

To be fair, teams, GMs, players, and agents all could see the writing on the wall and there has never been less incentive to sign early.

The best breaks for the Leafs would be that some team friendly signings occur around the league that set favourable precedents. That hasn't worked with Marner in the past but could at least help with Knies and Tavares. The Leafs could also benefit from more players being open to test free agency as a result of the increasing cap. Other than Rantanen there really isn't a Marner replacement option but if players like Ehlers, Boeser, Ekblad, and Chychrun are available, at least there is some mitigation.

The Leafs can also take some comfort in the fact that as it sits, this is their last bad year for dealing with re-signings for a while. Their defence are locked in at reasonable prices, addressing a raise for Stolarz won't be an issue when that time approaches, and at least on the surface the summer of 2026 looks like a gloriously optimistic time for upgrades. That is assuming a ton of consistency in personnel.

Even with the cap projections in, there should be some incentive to get deals done sooner than later. There is a very real possibility that someone from Knies' draft year will land a windfall or that someone will like a Claude Giroux, Brad Marchand, or Jamie Benn a little too much for Tavares to achieve his full discount potential. And there is a benefit in certainty of having Marner locked up and part of the Leafs future that has an appeal over going into July 1st where anything could happen. There is little benefit to a "wait and see" approach for the Leafs when it comes to these contracts and meeting the players where they are at today might be the best call in the long run.

Data from <a href="http://puckpedia.com">PuckPedia</a>

Salary cap projections vs. procrastinating on contract negotations

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