The Toronto Maple Leafs were one of the busiest teams through the opening week of free agency, signing goalie Aaron Dell, defensemen Zach Bogosian and TJ Brodie, and forwards Jimmy Vesey, Wayne Simmonds and Joe Thornton, and trading winger Andreas Johnsson for youngster Joey Anderson.
After signing Thornton to a one-year, $700,000 contract on Friday, Leafs GM Kyle Dubas is still keeping the lines of communication open to other free agents and opposing GM’s, but indicated that he is likely done adding to his roster.
“I think we’re always open to exploring anything. I don’t think we ever get too close-minded, or at least we try not to get too close-minded with any opportunities that might be there. I think what we are seeing now is that the players that are out there is the players look at our situation and don’t see a huge amount of opportunity at this point, whereas that was different about a week ago.” Dubas said in a conference call on Sunday.
There are those elements that are a little bit prohibitive in terms of us adding players. There are still guys who think they can beat guys on our roster out, but at the same time, we’ve got salary cap constraints and contract slot constraints as well. We would be open-minded to anything. We will continue to stay in touch with those players that are still available, but I would be surprised if we were to add anybody more at this point at any of the three positions that would make a huge impact.”
The Leafs have just under $1.5 million in available cap space (according to Cap Friendly) with RFA’s Travis Dermott and Ilya Mikheyev to sign, but Dubas does not believe that any trades will be necessary to move out salary to fit them in. Toronto may be prepared to manage the salary cap in a similar manner that they did last season, keeping less than 23 players on the NHL roster and calling up players from the American Hockey League when needed.
“Whether we have to go with 20 men on the roster to start, or whether on off days and with the team being so close. (Sending) guys down to play games for the Marlies rather than sitting out for us, if they have been through waivers or they are waiver exempt in order to keep guys fresh and active and accrue some savings that way, will be key.” Dubas said. “At this time, in working with Brandon Pridham on it daily, it doesn’t appear that we will need to move anybody else out.”
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