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Superstar Salary Structures: Dubas in control

August 20, 2019, 10:27 AM ET [203 Comments]
Lucas Neilson
Blogger •Atlantic Division Writer • RSSArchiveCONTACT
When looking at the Toronto Maple Leafs roster it looks stacked with high end talent. That’s because it’s exactly that; top tier.

Matthews and Tavares chew up a solid 22.634 million in cap space. That’s a handsome chunk of the Leafs overall cap right there. Add in Marner at say 10 million a year and voila the Leafs have 32.634 million with just three players signed. Are you concerned? I’m certainly not.

The only way you build a championship team is to have young high end talent. Note the keyword young. The Leafs used to always scoop up ageing quality players who were passed their prime. Thankfully that is all behind us and Dubas and Shanahan are doing their best to lead us to the promise land. Players like Matthews and Tavares cost 11 million a year because they are both game changers. Tavares is a natural born leader on the ice and he’s here to win and will push all his teammates to be better players, that’s just how Johnny T works.

With this being Tavares’ second season with the Buds you can expect him to really show his leadership skills as he feels much more comfortable heading into his second season with the Leafs. Captain or not, I can see Tavares leading by example all season and being a bit more vocal with teammates and coaching staff.

With such elite talent in the organization, you need quality contracts and a well thought out plan. Dubas has added players like Petan, Agostino, Wilson, Spezza, Aberg, Harpur, Schmaltz and Hutchinson as the Leafs backup heading into the season. These are all players making under one million dollars thus keeping the Leafs salary cap issues at bay.

He’s got some quality deals with Rielly (5), Kerfoot (3.5), Kapanen (3.2) and both Muzzin(4) and Barrie deals are great as well. Obviously the only issue there is one season remaining on the contract. Dubas will have some big decisions to make going forward.

If Dubas can get Nylander back to his confident scoring ways, he will have yet another contract that looks pretty good on the books. At first the 6.9 looked a bit heavy to me, honestly it did. But if Nylander can click with Matthews and those two can get back to dominating as Willy said he will be, then the Leafs will have two lines of fiery rolling hot.

Teams like Colorado rely so heavily on one line; the Leafs have the luxury of rolling not only two top quality lines; they still have depth on the bottom nine which is hugely important when we get to the post season. It’s always important not to burn your players out with huge amounts of ice time, especially goaltenders.

The Leafs have some quality depth players now as they have established themselves as a team free agent players want to come play for. Tavares led the way and others will follow; just like Shanahan said they would when he talked about the rebuild years ago.

The Shanaplan has unfolded beautifully and Dubas has taken the bull by the horns.

Let’s see management finalize yet another quality off season with the signing of Mitch Marner.

We’re all ready!

Thanks for reading, have a great day.
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