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Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
The Toronto Maple Leafs and William Nylander agreed to the largest contract in franchise history on Monday, as the 27-year-old forward signed an eight-year contract extension with an average annual value of $11.5 million against the salary cap. The deal begins next season.
According to Cap Friendly, $69 million of the $92 million will be paid in bonus money, with a full no-movement clause throughout the contract.
It’s a deal that will have big ramifications for the Leafs and the rest of the NHL.
Does this deal make sense?
Within the context of other recent deals it absolutely does, both within the Leafs organization and the NHL.
Auston Matthews‘ new four-year deal, which kicks in next season along with Nylander’s, carries a $13.25 million annual cap hit, accounting for 15.87% of the Leafs’ cap, per Cap Friendly. Mitch Marner will be in the final year of his six-year contract extension next season, carrying a $10.903 million AAV.
Nylander was always going to slot in between those two on this deal — there was never a chance he’d make less than Marner on this extension. Just how much higher than Marner was always the question.
Back in November, the Evolving Hockey contract projection model had Nylander at $9.64 million AAV on a deal that accounted for 11% of an $87.5 million salary cap. They did caution that “extensions notoriously stray from market for one reason or another,” and by January Nylander had provided a reason of his own: 54 points in 37 games, including 21 goals. That made him the fourth-highest scorer in the NHL on a points-per-game basis.
He has trended up offensively over the last two seasons, essentially tying Marner in points per game from 2022-23 through 2023-24.
Nylander is a star now and will be paid accordingly.
Nylander isn’t the first player to change the math for his contract with a career year. David Pastrnak essentially did the same thing for the Boston Bruins last season. As the winger put together a masterful 61-goal season, it took until March for the Bruins to finally get his name on an eight-year extension worth $11.25 million against the cap annually.
Nylander’s dominant campaign, combined with concrete news that the salary cap is on the rise again, no doubt rewrote this contract a few times in the last few months.
(This contract is, of course, a bet that that the cap will continue to rise. It’s a bet GM Kyle Dubas made a few years ago with his contracts, before a global pandemic made the cap stop rising. So it’s never a guarantee. That’s why they’re called projections.)
Including deals on the books now, Nylander will be tied with Erik Karlsson of the Pittsburgh Penguins for the fifth-highest cap hit in the NHL next season, ahead of Pastrnak and $1 million more annually than Jonathan Huberdeau‘s eight-year contract with the Calgary Flames that he signed in August 2022. His is for eight years, with a full no-movement clause in the first six seasons.
The general manager who inked Huberdeau was Brad Treliving, who is now running the Toronto Maple Leafs, and no doubt hopes that Nylander’s contract doesn’t end up as the same cautionary tale as Huberdeau’s has for Calgary. Or Jamie Benn‘s in Dallas, which looked a heck of a lot better at 27 years old than it does at 34, and carries the same albatross of a full run of no-movement clauses.
That’s coin of the realm for a contract like this, but remains absolutely the worst aspect of Nylander’s deal from a Leafs perspective, especially when combined with the amount of bonus money ($69 million) he’ll be paid. It’s essentially a buyout-proof contract that prohibits the Leafs from trading, demoting or releasing him. They are betting that Nylander will continue to be excellent now and at least very good later.
That’s the whole ballgame with the Nylander contract. He’ll turn 28 before this deal kicks in. Statistical decline will happen. Injuries will happen. The goal is to win a Stanley Cup well before any of that becomes a migraine for management, which brings us to the hockey world’s favorite query …
What does this mean for the Leafs?
One of the perpetual debates in a salary capped league is whether a “top-heavy” team can contend for a championship. If you’re dedicating a preposterous amount of cap space to four or five players, can you still build a winning team around them?
I think the results show that you can. It hasn’t happened for the Maple Leafs yet, but it certainly happened for the Penguins and Tampa Bay Lightning — twice, in fact. The issue isn’t whether a top-heavy team can win. It’s that there is a narrow window to win the Stanley Cup before you become a victim of your own success.
The Lightning are an oft-cited example of this, having jettisoned their second-best defenseman, multiple top-six forwards and their entire checking line from the championship seasons as they had to increase the salaries of other vital core players. They’ve gone from a team chasing division titles to one chasing a wild-card spot. It has gotten to the point where the next contract for Steven Stamkos is going to be impacted by the team’s needs down the lineup.
The other issue for a top heavy team is finding a supporting cast that can fit under the cap. That’s a cast usually put together through a team’s drafting and development system, and that’s a challenge for the Leafs, quite frankly. They ranked 27th in The Athletic’s most recent prospect pipeline ratings. Their success and recent transactions haven’t exactly bolstered their draft classes, so they may have to find cheap labor outside the organization, which isn’t ideal but isn’t impossible.
But here’s the thing: Are the Leafs actually going to be a top-heavy team under the Nylander contract?
Toronto now has 12 players under contract for next season, the first season of Nylander’s deal. Granted, that amounts to $66.4 million in payroll already, but that’s significant roster flexibility around an expensive core. Half their defense core comes off the cap this summer.
Center John Tavares ($11 million AAV) comes off the cap after 2024-25. If he returns to Toronto, it’s going to be on a significant discount given his age. Marner also comes off the cap after 2024-25. He’s a member of the “Core Four” with Matthews, Nylander and Morgan Rielly. He’s also not the playoff performer that Nylander has been for Toronto.
This isn’t to say that Marner won’t be re-signed. It’s to say that a top-heavy team has a sneaky amount of flexibility if they choose to have it — although the “Toronto chose Nylander over Marner” debates could fuel Toronto sports radio for the next decade if Marner ends up playing elsewhere.
The bottom line is that if — or when — the Maple Leafs fall short in the postseason, they aren’t tethered to a bloated roster just because Nylander signed for eight years.
What does this mean for future UFAs?
The next big contract on the horizon is for Elias Pettersson, the star center for the Vancouver Canucks.
There’s no question that Nylander’s contract will be used when the two sides re-engage on talks, but the biggest difference between the two contracts is that Pettersson is a restricted free agent this summer. Not only does that change the math on the number of UFA years an eight-year contract would buy up for Vancouver, but it’s a significantly different kind of pressure point than having unrestricted free agency looming in the offseason like it was for Nylander.
Two pending unrestricted free agents who likely smiled a little looking at that Nylander contract: Florida Panthers winger Sam Reinhart (28 years old) and Pittsburgh Penguins winger Jake Guentzel (29).
They’re both slightly older, but have impressive free-agent cases to make: Guentzel as a Stanley Cup champion and points-per-game playoff performer who can hang with high-end talent; and Reinhart basically matching Guentzel’s regular-season output over the last three seasons while challenging for the league goal-scoring lead in 2023-24. In Reinhart’s case, Nylander’s contract might push his free agent price tag over the $10 million AAV mark.