William Nylander has been the Toronto Maple Leafs best player this season and the team needs to sign him immediately.
With six goals and 12 points in eight games, nobody has been better than William Nylander for the Toronto Maple Leafs this season.
It’s always nice when your fifth-highest paid player is the leading scorer on your roster, but that’s essentially the issue right now. Nylander is underpaid and is set for a big pay-raise next summer.
Nylander was eligible to sign a contract extension on July 1st, similar to his teammate Auston Matthews, but the two sides weren’t able to find the right number. Matthews, on the other hand, signed a four-year deal worth $13.25M AAV which will keep him on the roster until 2028.
As much as Nylander is a great player, Matthews was the number-one priority and someone they needed to sign first. Regardless of what he asked for, the team had to pay Matthews, as he’s arguably the best player in team history and has the accolades.
If Nylander played for a small market team and didn’t have Mitch Marner, John Tavares and Matthews ahead of him on the payroll, backing up the Brink Truck for Nylander would be a no-brainer. However, the biggest problem for this roster construction over the past decade has been that those four players make up for almost half of the salary-cap.
I know the salary cap is bound to rise, but how much more money can they give Nylander and still be able to fill the roster gaps around him?
The Toronto Maple Leafs biggest problem has been their blue-line, and they will definitely have to shell out for a top pairing player at some point, so how much more can they really afford to give him and keep the band together?
If Tavares was a pending UFA as well, it’d be a no-brainer to sign Nylander to a big contract, then let the captain either walk or try to sign him to a cheap deal. Tavares already made $77M by signing in Toronto and has yet to win, so maybe he’d be convinced to sign a hometown discount if it meant he had a few more cracks at winning a Stanley Cup in Toronto?
Unfortunately Tavares is still owed $11M next year, so that makes the salary cap a little tricky, especially since Matthews’ extension kicks in too.
However, after eight games, I don’t care about the salary-cap and how it’s all going to work because Nylander has been the team’s best player and they need to sign him to a contract extension, even if that AAV number starts with a $10M.
He’s pacing towards a 40-50 goal/90 point season which would put him in the top-10 in both categories, if not better. Not only that, but he’s continued to get better every year since he joined the NHL and doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.
Prior to the season, I would’ve been totally fine with the team trading him for a defenseman but at this rate, he’s just too good to let go. The team needs Nylander if they want to have any luck winning a Stanley Cup this year, so sign the guy before he’s an actual UFA and a smaller team gives him a Godfather offer.