The Toronto Maple Leafs have a chance to steal an absolutely incredible deal by capitalizing on the Anaheim Ducks' mistakes.
Today, the Ducks signed forward Leo Carlsson to a 5-year, $90 million deal with an AAV of $18 million.
And Anaheim still has a massive RFA on the books in Cutter Gauthier, but only $ 9 million left in cap space. And right now, the going rate for a player of his calibre is way over that AAV.
This means they will need to make room and create cap space by moving someone from the roster, and this is where the Toronto Maple Leafs can take advantage of the situation.
According to NHL insider David Pagnotta on the Sekeres and Price podcast stated that Anaheim was willing to attach a draft pick to move Vatrano.
Anaheim will attach a pick to move Frank Vatrano
Frank Vatrano is making an AAV of over $ 4.5 million over the next two seasons, with only a seven-team no-trade list.
He is an incredibly movable contract, and last season was inarguably the worst season of his career.
In his previous three seasons, he had 146 points over 294 games, and last season in 50 games he had nine points.
His point production dropping significantly year-over-year is concerning, and he is made available, but he is two seasons removed from a 37-goal campaign.
Regardless on if he is a major bounce-back candidate(is what Anaehim would argue), there is significant risk to taking on someone with that cap hit, and considering it is after free agency has started, cap room is not in abundance, and Anaheim has no leverage, they are likely going to have to add a sweetener to move off of Vatrano's cap hit.
Getting paid to take a bounce-back candidate is as much of a buy-low move as you can have, and that is just competent GMing in the NHL.
Because if it does not pan out, you still have the draft pick, even if you waive the player, but if it does work out and Vatrano can slot into your middle-six as a decent player again, it can really pay off.
Anaheim is at the point of desperation because Gauthier is going to be a huge piece to them contending in the future, and if it costs them a little bit of capital to make it work, so be it.
The only thing standing between Toronto and this is the Morgan Rielly contract
Toronto would be an interesting candidate for Vatrano, and his seven-team no-trade list likely has the Maple Leafs off of it.
With that said, for the move to work, the Maple Leafs would have to clear some space of their own, and the fit for Vatrano would work, as the Leafs taking a risk on a bounce-back candidate is huge.
If it pays off, they got their second- or third-line winger, and having Vatrano on your third line playing healthy is a great thing for them.
The Leafs have been reported to be moving on from Rielly, and off of his $ 7.5 million AAV contract would free up a ton of space and allow the Maple Leafs to asset-manage their way into being better in the future.
One other bonus is that Vatrano's contract is up after two years and is in line with most of the roster in terms of not extending beyond two years; Rielly's is four years, and having Vatrano on the roster instead of Rielly allows them more flexibility in coming years.
Where will Frank Vatrano play next season?
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