The Toronto Maple Leafs announced today that they have acquired forward David Clarkson from the Vegas Golden Knights in addition to the Knight’s 2020 fourth round pick in exchange for goaltender Garrett Sparks. Seems simple enough on the surface right? It’s actually quite the contrary. Clarkson suffered a career-ending back injury in March of 2016, and he will be placed on the long term injured reserve (LTIR). They appear to have done this to give themselves more room to resign young star Mitch Marner, although they still may need to clear a bit more. Here’s where things get complicated though. This is likely going to take a while for me to explain, but bear with me, it will hopefully all make sense at the end of this post!
The LTIR is a tool in the CBA that allows teams to exceed the cap by any player’s cap hit that meets certain requirements. This following quote taken directly from Article 50.10(d) of the full collective bargaining agreement on the NHL’s website: “In the event that a Player on a Club becomes unfit to play (i.e., is injured, ill or disabled and unable to perform his duties as a hockey Player) such that the Club’s physician believes, in his or her opinion, that the Player, owing to either an injury or an illness, will be unfit to play for at least (i) twenty-four (24) calendar days and (ii) ten (10) NHL Regular Season games, and such Club desires to replace such Player, the Club may add an additional Player or Players to its Active Roster, and the replacement Player Salary and Bonuses of such additional Player(s) may increase the Club’s Averaged Club Salary to an amount up to and exceeding the Upper Limit, solely as, and to the extent and for the duration, set forth below.” Again, those are not my words but taken directly from the collective bargaining agreement posted on the NHL’s website.
That’s a lot of legal speak. Basically, it all boils down to a team can place a player on the LTIR if the team physician deems him unfit to play for at least 24 days and 10 games, and that once they do so, the team may exceed the salary cap by the amount of his contract until they put him back on the active roster. At that time, the team must shed whatever amount of salary they went over the cap ceiling on. The LTIR is only typically only used by teams when a player suffers a career-ending injury, as it is complicated and often too much work for teams to place a player on it that will be returning due to numerous other requirements that I felt were unnecessary to include in this article. Now, on to what this means in this specific situation.
The Leafs already have Nathan Horton’s $5.3 million contract to put on the LTIR next season, and now have Clarkson’s $5.25 million as well. This means that once the season starts and those two have undergone physicals and been deemed unfit to play this season, they will be eligible to be placed on the LTIR and the Leafs will be able to exceed the cap by $10.55 million. With this move, the Leafs now have two options. The first and best one is they can sign Marner before the season begins and place Horton and Clarkson on the LTIR on the last day of training camp after their physicals so they are cap compliant when the season starts. The other is if they are unable to sign Marner before the season starts, they can still place them on the LTIR, but they will not get any relief from doing so until they sign Marner and are over the cap ceiling. But. if they choose this route, they must be cap compliant on the first day of the regular season before placing anyone on the LTIR, meaning they will have to bury a little under $1 million, which can easily be done by sending a waivers-exempt player down to the AHL. Then, they just place those two on the LTIR and call the player back up and all is good again.
Where I have found most people getting confused is exactly what Toronto gained here. The Leafs had $4,240,301 in cap space before this trade, and would not have been able to get LTIR relief from Nathan Horton’s contract as they were not close enough to the cap ceiling to get it. Also, what many people do not realize is that Horton was not placed on the LTIR last season as the Leafs did not need the cap relief from it. So, before the Clarkson trade, they would have had $9,540,301 to spend with Horton on the LTIR. After this trade, the Leafs have $10.55 million to spend once both Horton and Clarkson are on the LTIR. So, this means that they only gained $1,009,699 in cap flexibility through this trade. They did not gain $5.25 million, nor $10.55 million as I’ve seen some people say. They only gained the ability to spend slightly over $1 million more through this trade. It is not as good as it was made out to be, but they did gain a little bit.
Ideally, for Toronto, they will resign Marner before the season begins so he does not miss training camp, but that is looking more and more unlikely and the team appears to be preparing to start the season without him, and fans probably should too. Things get even more complicated if they don’t sign him before the season, as his cap hit will be prorated for however many days he will be on the roster that season, meaning his cap hit will be greater in the first year than it will be in all subsequent years, like William Nylander’s was. This would make things even worse for the Leafs, as they certainly would not have enough cap space with the LTIR relief to cover the first year. As I said above though, it is, unfortunately, looking like the most likely scenario, meaning the Leafs will likely have to ship out some serious salary before they sign him.
Now, all that being said, regardless of when they sign him, the Leafs likely still have to clear a little more space in order to sign Marner, as he is looking for the same contract Auston Matthews has, which was five years at $11.634 million per season. That is far from their biggest problem though. Yes, this solution will work for this season. But, both Horton and Clarkson’s contracts are up next season and Toronto won’t have the luxury of putting them on the LTIR and being able to exceed the cap by them then. Granted, they will the $10.55 million in real cap space back, so they won’t need the LTIR, but they also have just one defenseman under contract next season. Their defense is still not good despite being improved this offseason, and it would be in their best interests to spend more money on them if they want to truly contend. They will not have the cap space to do so, with $27,303,634 in projected cap space without adjusting for the salary cap going up and they have four forwards, five defensemen, and their backup goaltender up next season. You cannot improve your defense while having to resign that many guys with that amount of cap space, even though that seems like a lot. Some of those players, namely Tyson Barrie, are also looking at major raises. This will put Toronto in a terrible spot, as the 30 other teams in the league will all know that they have to shed salary and will not do them any favors, especially since they’re trying to sign Marner using pretty cheap methods. What they are doing is technically legal by the CBA, but it’s obvious the only reason they acquired Clarkson’s contract was the use it to cheat the salary cap system, which is certainly not going to endear them to the rest of the league.
I still remain that it is not in the best long term interests of the team to resign Marner, and it is not just because I’m a Bruins fan. It is not exactly smart to have over $33 million tied up in just three players, especially if you expect to be a contending team. The Leafs’ defense, as mentioned above, improved the offseason, but it’s still bad and needs to be improved further if they want to make a deep run. You can’t expect to win games 7-6 in the playoffs, or expect your goalie to bail out your defenseman every game. They also only have one defenseman under contract beyond this upcoming season. While it is their best defender in Morgan Rielly, I’m pretty sure you need six defenders on the bench and that you need some really good ones who tend to cost a lot of money. Also, they don’t have a solid backup goalie, meaning Frederik Anderson has to play way more than he should if they want him at his best come playoff time. They will not be able to fix any of the issues now or in the future if they resign Marner. In my opinion, and I’ll get some hate and get called an idiot for this, the Leafs had no business going after Tavares in free agency last offseason and paying him what they did. While he is a great player, they now are scrambling to try and resign the guy who was arguably their best player last season and is also six years younger. Granted, I’m not complaining here as I’m greatly enjoying watching them scramble and probably come back a worse team for this offseason given they had to trade away several players to make cap space for Marner, and they still don’t quite have enough. But, I sincerely tried to clear my head of my bias towards the Leafs while thinking about this article, and am only adding it back in while I’m writing to make it a bit more interesting.
Dubas is a smart man, but he is failing to see the big picture here. This move will help the team improve their chances of resigning Marner now and will help them for this year, but it is merely a band-aid to cover up the bigger issue. There is no way after this season that Toronto will be able to retain all of their big players, stay cap compliant, and stay a contending team. Something will have to give. If they do this, this upcoming season will be their best and possibly only chance to win the Stanley Cup for the foreseeable future, as the team will look much different after. We saw how going all-in worked out for the Columbus Blue Jackets last season, and while the Leafs are a much better team than the Jackets, they are also in a much tougher and top-heavy division. All of this being said, this is all purely speculation and many of you will probably just write me off because I’m a Bruins fan. But, as I said above, I have tried hard to eliminate my bias in order to think about the situation clearly, and if you really think about it you may agree with me at least a little bit. We’ll see how all this unfolds for this season and the ones beyond, but the Leafs should think long and hard about what they are about to do and what it means for the future even though they are trying to contend now. If they don’t, they’ll go from a team with a bright future and potentially long Cup contention window back to the dark days they were in just a few years ago.
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