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The Toronto Maple Leafs had their final free agent situation resolved when an arbitrator awarded goalie Ilya Samsonov a one-year, $3.55 million contract for next season. The award was nearly in the middle of the Leafs offer of $2.4 million and Samsonov’s ask of $4.9 million.
Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported before the hearing on Friday that the Leafs had hoped to get Samsonov signed to a longer-term deal of perhaps three years, but the two sides did not reach a settlement, possibly because a deal buying two years of unrestricted free agency would elevate the AAV close to or above $5 million per season.
With the award, the Leafs are now projected to be $12.3 million over the $83.5 million salary cap, which means GM Brad Treliving will be using the buyout window activated by the signing in some way. Toronto has a number of moves that they could make to become cap compliant, but if they chose to use the buyout option, they have 72 hours after the Samsonov to do something.
The likeliest option is to buy out the final year of goalie Matt Murray’s contract, which has a cap hit of $4.687 million next season. A buyout would have a small cap penalty of $687,500 for 2023-24, but a $2 million penalty for 2024-25. There has been some confusion about whether Murray would be eligible for a buyout with his checkered health history, but the two-time Cup winner was medically cleared after suffering a concussion in early April and served as a backup to Joseph Woll late in the second-round series vs. Florida.
At the season-ending media availabilities, Murray indicated that he was healthy and ready to go at the end of the season, so unless there are some lingering concussion issues that cropped up after the season, he is eligible to be bought out.
Another option for Toronto is to trade the final year of the contract of Jake Muzzin. The defenseman was on LTIR for most of last season and is expected to be on LTIR for the final year of his four-year, $22.5 million deal.
The last season of Muzzin’s deal has a cap hit of $5.625 million, but $4 million in salary since the deal was front-loaded. Half of Muzzin’s salary was payable as a bonus on July 1, so the deal would only cost a club $2 million in real money, making it attractive to a club looking to get to the cap floor.
The least likely option is a buyout of the final year of defenseman TJ Brodie’s deal. A buyout would clear all $5 million of his contract this season but would result in a $2.5 million cap hit for 2024-25. Brodie is still a very serviceable blueliner, and with the Leafs thin on defense, this move would create more of a problem.