Let's Face Off

So September is here, and the hockey season is just around the corner.
That used to be a good feeling and now, well, it’s the beginning of the end of our golf season, and wasn’t it just a couple of weeks ago that various Washington Capitals were rolling around in public fountains and such in celebration of winning the Stanley Cup?

But here we are, leaves on the trees just starting to turn, kids and teachers heading back to classes Tuesday, another Labour Day game in the books and a very set and reinforced Maple Leafs hockey club looking like the sky is the limit.

OK, maybe this is a good feeling after all. This could be quite an entertaining ride.
Not a bunch of kids anymore. Mike Babcock beginning his fourth season behind the bench. Kyle Dubas, after a substantial apprenticeship, beginning his first season as general manager.

Two questions, or issues, remain unresolved, but neither would appear to be a threat to upset the entire apple cart on its own.
William Nylander doesn’t have a contract, and that’s significant. Interestingly, the hockey club also hasn’t signed Auston Matthews or Mitch Marner to new contracts this summer. Both have another year left on their entry-level contracts, but other teams have jumped ahead with extensions before they actually had to.

So Dubas has yet to put any of the pieces of this payroll jigsaw puzzle together. Or at least he hasn’t officially finalized the moves he plans to make.
 The Leafs have stretched the Nylander contract question out as far as they possibly can. He was drafted in 2014, eighth overall, but he spent the next year playing in Sweden, for Sweden and for the AHL Marlies. So his entry-level deal didn’t kick in until 2015.

Now, with 42 goals and 80 assists in 163 NHL games, plus two goals in 13 playoff games, a decision needs to be made. The season begins in four weeks. Decision time is upon us.
You can make a pretty good guess that he’s going to consistently score 25 to 30 goals over the next seven to 10 years. But he might be a 40-goal shooter, and he might also ultimately be a centre, not a right winger, which could substantially alter his value.

So this screams out for a short-term bridge contract, right?
Problem is, NHL players seem to take those as some kind of insult. Remember P.K. Subban in Montreal?
Seven players were drafted ahead of Nylander in 2014. Aaron Ekblad, the No. 1 pick, signed an eight-year, $60-million extension two years ago (all dollars U.S.). Second overall selection Sam Reinhart is in the same situation as Nylander, looking for a new deal.


Third pick Leon Draisaitl signed an eight-year, $68-million extension last year. Sam Bennett, taken fourth by Calgary, signed a moderately priced two-year bridge contract last September. Michael Dal Colle, No. 5 that year, didn’t have his contract kick in until 2016, so he’s just beginning the third year of his entry-level deal.
Jake Virtanen, sixth overall and a disappointment as a Vancouver Canuck, just signed a two-year bridge contract. Finally, the seventh pick, defenceman Haydn Fleury, like Dal Colle, still has a year left on his first contract.


Which brings us to Nylander. Of the seven players taken before him, only Ekblad and Draisaitl have hit big salary numbers. Bennett and Virtanen — neither the player Nylander is — got bridge deals because they had no bargaining power.
Nylander has bargaining power, and he also knows that Winnipeg winger Nik Ehlers, taken eighth in that draft, signed a seven-year, $42-million contract extension last October that kicks in this season, and that he and Ehlers are pretty similar players.
At $6 million per season, it seems like a good deal for Winnipeg and a tad low for Nylander. But not if it was just for the next two years and he could renegotiate after that, for substantially more. So maybe the bridge deal could be very good for him, too.

The other question that’s been hanging around all summer is the captaincy.
Here’s how I see it: John Tavares shouldn’t be made captain before having played a single game for the Leafs. In fact, not before he’s played at least one season. Even Wayne Gretzky played in L.A. for a season before taking over the captaincy from Dave Taylor.

Moreover, the guess here is that Tavares couldn’t care a fig about a letter on his jersey after carrying that burden with the Islanders for so long. He just wants to play for a good team, the team of his childhood.
Matthews, the other leading candidate, hasn’t yet earned the captaincy. That’s more based on feel than fact. He just doesn’t yet carry the gravitas necessary to get the “C” and make it work. However, you can bet Matthews does care, and very much, about becoming captain.
So the obvious solution is to wait. There’s not a stitch of evidence to suggest playing without a captain has negatively impacted the Leafs.

Shelve this “issue” until next fall. By then, the payroll will have been filled out, the team will have or won’t have won a playoff series, and there will be more information upon which to base a decision.

So there you have it. Issues resolved. Let the season begin.