Auston Matthews, William Nylander, John Tavares, and Mitch Marner are all due massive bonuses this summer as the Leafs pay their star players upfront.
Obviously, the Leafs have paid their star players more than any other team in the league. They are the only organization to have four players making eight-digits a year in NHL history. However, things are even worse for the Leafs on that front as the way they have structured these contracts means there will be pain on July 1st. Auston Matthews has the largest signing bonus in the league due, just under 16 million dollars. William Nylander is due a 10 million dollar bonus, while Mitch Marner and John Tavares are both due bonuses in the 7 million dollar range.
These signing bonus do not equal the salary cap hit the players have for their team, as it does not include their salaries. Furthermore, the cap hit is calculated on an average-annual basis. For the Leafs, these contracts are largely front-loaded, so they will owe their players less money in the future, but the cap hit will remain the same. That being said, the team better hope these players start to step it up in the playoffs. or else this entire era of Leafs hockey could be a wasted. Fans are already anticipating the Leafs failure next season.
Of course, these signing bonuses could be avoided if the Leafs were to trade any of these players before July 1st. Right now it sounds like Mitch Marner might be a candidate for such a move, but we will just have to wait and see what the summer has in store for us.
