Why Maple Leafs should bargain hunt, not big-game hunt, for a goalie this summer

Admittedly, it was hard to keep a straight face when John Tavares said it.

The wound was fresh. His Toronto Maple Leafs had been eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs in crushing fashion minutes earlier. I believe he believed his words:

“We’re right there.”

Right there? After one playoff series win in two decades? After dropping a fourth Game 7 to the Boston Bruins since 2013, blowing a third-period lead in three of those defeats? After going 0-6 in do-or-die games across eight seasons of the Auston Matthews/Mitch Marner era?

With the Stanley Cup playoffs still going on six weeks after Tavares’ comment, the idea of Toronto being “right there” feels downright embarrassing.

And yet: there’s a degree of sympathy when you drill down and examine one of the common denominators across their playoff defeats over the past eight seasons: that they couldn’t get a save when they really needed one.

Here’s a look at Toronto’s save percentage compared to its opponents’ save percentages across its eight series defeats since 2016-17:

They have been outgoalied in five of eight series, though the margin isn’t as wide as some perceive it to be. The Leafs have received .919 or better goaltending for each of the last five series in which they were eliminated. It’s more the consistency in crunch time that is the problem. Game 7 this past spring was the quintessential example. Ilya Samsonov had a .938 SV% that night but allowed a backbreakingly soft tying goal and had major brainfart choosing not to play the puck on David Pastrnak’s overtime winner. Of course, Samsonov wasn’t even supposed to be in net that night, as series-stealing hero Joseph Woll had to pull out with a back injury after dragging Toronto back into the series with scintillating efforts in Games 5 and 6.

But the bottom line is: while goaltending isn’t the only reason, it has certainly contributed to Toronto’s inability to break through. So it’s understandable if Leafs management is licking its chops approaching one of the best buyer’s markets for goaltending in recent offseason memory.

Samsonov is a UFA and long gone, so the Leafs will obviously seek new netminder to pair with Woll, who continues to show the athleticism and poise of a No. 1 goaltender but has not shown he can stay healthy under a starter’s workload.

The crucial question this offseason: which aisle will GM Brad Treliving shop in?

The high-end options are plentiful. The Boston Bruins are committed to Jeremy Swayman as their No. 1 and it would only make too much sense to move Linus Ullmark entering the final season of his deal, though it’s doubtful they’d want to send him to a primary division rival. The Nashville Predators might deal Juuse Saros for the right offer and commit to Yaroslav Askarov as the heir apparent. The Calgary Flames were close to trading Jacob Markstrom this past winter. The Minnesota Wild have a logjam in net and are willing to move Filip Gustavsson to free up more opportunity for Jesper Wallstedt.

The free agent market looks decent, too. Cam Talbot had an up and down year but was good enough to earn an All-Star Game invite. Laurent Brossoit and Anthony Stolarz were the two best backups in the NHL this season and would surely welcome the chance for larger workloads.

So which route will the Leafs choose? We know for a fact the organization has expressed urgency, the need to make a deep run before Matthews’ prime – and contract – run out four seasons from now. They replaced coach Sheldon Keefe with a Stanley Cup winner in Craig Berube. Team president Brendan Shanahan indicated “everything is on the table” in regards to making major personnel changes, and the defining narrative of Toronto’s summer will be what the Leafs, Marner and potential trade suitors decide about his future. With the salary cap jumping to $88 million, the Leafs have more than $18 million in projected cap space to play with.

The circumstantial evidence supports the idea that Toronto will swing for the fences and pursue someone like Markstrom, whom Treilving previously signed as Calgary Flames GM, or Saros.

Doing so would be a mistake.

For one: it would probably mean devoting a significant chunk of cap space to bring in a higher-end masked man. Markstrom carries a $6 million cap hit, and Saros sits at $5 million. Both players are eligible for extensions July 1, and while Markstrom could earn a similar AAV on his next deal, Saros is clearly owed a major raise. Toronto badly needs help on its blueline, and there are some excellent fits available as UFAs this summer assuming they make it to market, from righties Brandon Montour and Chris Tanev to lefty Nikita Zadorov. It has already been reported that the Leafs hope to chase more than one high-end defense option this offseason, and adding a hefty goalie AAV would make that process more difficult whether it’s a one-year rental or not.

Of course, it’s possible the other team could retain salary in a deal for one of the top-tier netminders. But that would up the acquisition cost, which is the second problem with going big-game hunting: it requires more than just money. The Leafs are in a transitional period, preparing for navigating a top-heavy payroll with Matthews and William Nylander making close to $25 million alone, and it’s important that they graduate some impactful players with entry-level AAVs, Easton Cowan being the prime example. They own the 23rd pick in the 2024 NHL Draft, which is loaded with promising blueliner prospects in the first round. Do they really want to surrender draft or prospect capital as part of an offer for a marquee goaltender?

Which brings us to problem No. 3: sometimes a marquee goaltender…isn’t. There’s no fickler position in pro sports today. Markstrom went from a Vezina Trophy runner-up in 2021-22 to one of the worst starters in the league the following season. Saros was outplayed in Round 1 of the 2023-24 playoffs by minor-leaguer Arturs Silovs, an injury replacement for an injury replacement. Sergei Bobrovsky, hero of the Florida Panthers’ past two playoff runs, was considered to own the worst contract in hockey just two years ago and was riding the bench at the start of the 2022-23 playoffs. Connor Hellebuyck, this year’s shoo-in Vezina Trophy winner, played some of the worst hockey of his life in Round 1 of the playoffs this spring.

Given how difficult it is to predict goaltender performance year to year and month to month, does it really make sense for the Leafs to spend money and assets to land a supposed elite netminder?

Instead, they could look at some of the mid-range UFA options who cost “only” money – and less of it. Take Brossoit and Stolarz, for instance. On a per-hour basis, they graded out as the two best goaltenders in the entire NHL this season in terms of goals saved above average. As a result, both have earned major pay hikes over their current AAVs of $1.75 million and $1.1 million, respectively. But they were such bargains this season that Brossoit could double his annual ask and Stolarz could triple it and they’d still cost significantly less than the other top-end options available. Even in an overpay scenario, the price should be reasonable for a 31- and a 30-year old with respective career highs of 24 and 28 games played.

Imagine pairing one of those two with Woll’s criminally low $766,667 cap hit for 2024-25. It would give the Leafs an above-average duo at worst and leave plenty of cap space to pursue help at other positions. If a Marner trade doomsday scenario does emerge, he should not be surrendered for help in goal. Not when there’s so much of it out there that doesn’t require a trade to acquire – and not when the position’s performance is impossible to predict.

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