The time has come for the Leafs to pay their stars – a look at how big contracts for big players will affect the rest of the roster.

Appeasing the 1%

By the close of 2018-19 season, most Toronto Maple Leafs fans were acutely aware of the incoming cap crunch being dealt with this season. In simple terms, the Leafs have a handful of really great players who needed new contracts as they entered their prime years, after already having proved they can produce at an elite level. John Tavares took $11M to become a Maple Leaf, Nylander claimed a long awaited $6.9M deal, and Matthews signed a monster extension at $11.6M per year. The Leafs continue to negotiate with Marner, while astronomical figures continue to float around – something in the $9.5-10M remains the most likely outcome.

So what will happen to the rest of the Leaf’s roster – how can they afford to pay all of these stars and keep solid role players around to balance the rest of the team? Ultimately, the leafs will field one the most unequal team in the NHL, and will need to be creative with signing depth forwards to make up for the extra cap dollars going to heir young core. The good news – the leafs front office is aware of the issue – and has a decent track record in these types of signings. Last year, Tyler Ennis and to a lesser extent, Par Lindholm were good signings that filled out the bottom of the roster. This year, they are rolling the dice on Teemu Kivihalme, and Ilya Mikheyev from Europe.

The stratification of the Leafs is already apparent when you take a look at the distribution of their salary going into 2018-19. The nearby graphic includes the Leaf’s roster to date, assuming a $10M cap hit for Marner, and the discounted cap hit for Tyson Barrie. The Leafs have a lot of players at the bottom of the distribution – mostly recent league minimum signings, and Dermott on his ELC deal. The next tier of players emerges with Hyman at $2.25M and ends with Rielly/Andersen at $5M. This gap, and the lack of players in the $1M-$3M range will be a persistent trend given the top-heaviness of the Leafs roster.

The typical signing in this range – a depth forward or low pairing defenseman – is money taken away from players in the middle/top of the salary distribution. Given the availability of options at league minimums (re: Spezza, Shore, Petan), it isn’t worth the extra salary for this type of player. Now the Leafs theoretically have plenty of cap space next year ($26M according to CapFriendly) – but Morgan Reilly will be their only defenseman under contract, so there will be plenty of work to do. If the Leafs want to pony up the cash to resign Muzzin, Barrie, or go after another target in free agency or via trade – they will need to continue to stratify their lineup and use league minimums for depth forwards.

The Maple Leafs Will Be The Most Unequal in the NHL

We should expect the Maple Leafs to be one of the most unequal teams in the NHL for at least the next few years. One aspect of this is the ebb and flow of a rebuild – low draft picks develop into star players who command huge salaries and the fringe of the roster becomes less of a priority. The same trend happened to the Pittsburgh Penguins and Chicago Blackhawks as they developed their young talent. However, there is a growing feeling that RFA negotiations are deviating from the past in the amount of leverage that players have off of their ELC, especially among elite players. Matthew’s giant contract is already evidence of this, and the state of affairs with Marner has been attributed to a new attitude among younger players. This could push teams like the leafs to become even more unequal as stars soak up more of the cap.

To summarize the current state, I calculated the Gini coefficient, a commonly used measure for inequality, for each team in the NHL. The coefficient ranges from 0 to 1 , with 0 representing perfect equality (all players make the same) and 1 representing perfect inequality (1 players make all the money).

As you can see, the Leafs are already the most unequal team, followed by the LA Kings and Tampa Bay Lightning. The Leafs are a lot like the Brazil of the real world – despite a high growth profile (GDP above 5% for much of the early 2000s) – rewards go to the top of the income distribution. Exactly how things shake out next year with the amount of cap space the Leafs have will be determined, but for now it seems like the “1%” will prevail and take a larger share of the slighting growing pie.

Data from HockeyReference, references of salary from CapFriendly.com. Visuals created by MackinawStats using R’s ggplot2.

– Mackinaw Stats