It’s hard to find a silver lining in a promising prospect’s injury. But now that Nick Robertson has had season-ending surgery after initially hoping rehabilitation would get him back in the fold, the Toronto Maple Leafs no longer have to wonder about the 21-year-old’s status for the season.
It also means that the Leafs will certainly have an additional $796,667 to work with as the team looks toward the NHL trade deadline on Mar. 3, without the concern of losing that space had the player come back before the regular season.
The Maple Leafs placed Robertson on long-term injured reserve (LTIR) shortly after the California native injured his shoulder on Dec. 8. If a player comes back during the regular season while on LTIR, the NHL club has to have the available salary-cap space to accommodate his activation to the active roster. Although the Leafs could have easily sent him down to the Toronto Marlies upon activation, by being on LTIR for the remainder of the season, the Leafs have $796,667 in permanent exception space for the remainder of the 2022-23 regular season.
With so many teams at or very close to the NHL’s salary cap of $82.5 million, it’s going to prove exceptionally hard for teams to make significant deals to help their club without finding additional teams as ‘brokers’ to help take on some form of salary retention. , for a price, of course.
According to Puckpedia.com, 17 of the 32 NHL clubs (including Toronto) are into LTIR this season. And while many of those teams have some wiggle room in LTI space, Toronto has just $1,201,250 in exception space which includes defenseman Jake Muzzin on LTIR (cervical spine issue) and Victor Mete (lower-body injury).
The Leafs should have more clarity on Muzzin in late February when the veteran defenseman is re-evaluated. But even if Muzzin is shut down for the season, there’s not a lot of space for Toronto to work with.
In 2021, the Maple Leafs employed the use of multiple teams to help acquire Nick Foligno at 25 percent of the players’ cap hit. They did that by using a third-party team to retain the maximum of 50 percent of a contract, only to retain 50 percent of that remaining cap it.
But there are limits.
Teams can only have three retained players on their books in any given season and the sum of retained players cap hits cannot exceed 15 percent of the salary cap ($12.375 million).
A team that could be a seller at the trade deadline like the Ottawa Senators, have already used one of three slots on Maple Leafs goaltender Matt Murray, and would only be able to retain deals for two more players.
Outside of the double retention strategies, the Leafs could look to offload a roster player, but that would be counter to Toronto’s strategy for loading up on depth.
So while Robertson’s season-ending injury is unfortunate for all involved, the Leafs have some cap space to work with that’s static.
Other injuries that would track for regular-season ending would also help Toronto.
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