He signed an
extension with Edmonton, one of the least desirable free agent destinations in the NHL. He was never going to be a free agent next summer, and Brad Treliving never had a chance to do anything anyway
I wish he was a Leaf, in a perfect world he would return to his roots, sign with the Maple Leafs, finally lead us to the promised land of Lord Stanley and end 60 years of frustration and pain but it wasn’t meant to be
It’s bad news because I feel like this recent McDavid extension, while having Marner walk, has really come at the wrong time, yet again, for the Maple Leafs. They already handcuffed themselves at first in 2018-19 when they gave massive long term contracts with salary raises to marner/nylander/matthews/Tavares, and then when COVID hits, the cap goes flat for a number of years.
The salary Cap now increasing rapidly, and they're losing elite talent for nothing.
Yeah, the Leafs are going to have a shade over $20m in cap space next year with only Mattias Maccelli & Bobby McMann's contracts to deal with... but it's not like there's a clear way to actually spend that money on available elite talent. We will have the money and the cap space but there won’t be elite players to spend that money on.
Kaprizov and McDavid are already gone. And Jack Eichel won’t come here anyway.
And Players like Kempe, Connor, Necas, and Tuch won’t hit free agency and be available either- all teams across the league have a ton of cap space to be able to retain their own stars now.
WTH is wrong with him, at least take the money smh
