Maple Leafs mailbag, part 1: The goalie rotation, John Tavares' next contract, more buyouts?

With the 4 Nations Face-Off obviously drawing most of the attention right now, I thought it would be a good time to take a step back and answer some of your burning Toronto Maple Leafs questions this week.

More than 200 came in just before the break started, and theres a lot of good stuff there.

Enough to fill a book.

So well start here with the first round and hopefully well have time to get to some more in the near future.

Thanks to everyone for the great mailbag fodder.

Advertisement Lets dive in.

(Note: Some questions have been edited for style and clarity.) James, with the cap going up, do you think there will more of an appetite for buyouts? Im thinking Domi specifically and maybe Reaves or Kampf.

Trades are preferable but not likely much of a market (even with retention).

Waivers? At least there would be some cap relief if they clear.

Barry M.

I do think there will be, around the league, but none of these three are good candidates for one.

Lets go through them one by one.

Ryan Reaves has one year left on his deal at $1.35 million.

If you bought him out this summer, hed leave Toronto with a $450,000 cap hit for the next two seasons, saving them $900,000 this year and adding a charge of half that the year after that.

While that doesnt sound terrible, its worse than the alternatives.

If you waive Reaves, either a team claims him and youre free and clear of the entire amount, or he goes to the minors and all but $200,000 of his salary is buried.

So that would be the right route for him if management decides to move on and try to save the difference between his AAV and a league-minimum signing (just under $600,000).

Both David Kampf and Max Domi, meanwhile, have contracts that include a big chunk of signing-bonus money.

That cash is guaranteed, and you cant buy it out, which means the cap hit savings arent great going that route.

Credit to their agents, I suppose.

Kampfs cap hit is $2.4 million for another two seasons.

A buyout comes with a cap hit of $1.68 million the next two years and then $358,000 the two years after that.

Less savings than you can get by demoting him, in other words.

Youd be far better off waiving him or finding a trade with retention.

Domi, meanwhile, has a cap hit of $3.75 million for three more years.

But his buyout comes with a cap hit of $2.75 million for three years and then $500,000 for another three years beyond that.

Advertisement Again, not even close to worth it.

I do think the Leafs are going to have to clean up some of their cap misses down the lineup in the offseason, especially if they re-sign both Mitch Marner and John Tavares to the contracts it appears theyre headed for (close to $20 million combined).

But youre not wrong that finding trade partners here wont be easy.

And both Domi and Kampf have partial no-trade clauses that will further complicate things.

There could be a scenario in which you move out one or both of them for a contract of another struggling player, using retention to finesse a deal.

Ill be very surprised if all three are back after the seasons theyve had, as thats been a wasted $7.5 million.

When will the goalie rotation chit-chat stop? Paul I.

I mean, probably when we get to the playoffs.

I suspect Joseph Woll will be managements choice for Game 1 of Round 1, but there are still 27 games left, and Anthony Stolarz has been fantastic when healthy.

Stolarz, frankly, deserves a long look here down the stretch given his numbers.

Hes 10-5-2 with a league-best .929 save percentage (among goalies with a minimum of 15 appearances).

Woll is 19-11-0 with a .909 save percentage, but hes had to carry the mail and handle a No.

1 workload in a way Stolarz hasnt, including during stretches when the team hasnt played well in front of him.

Some further food for thought, though: If you look at the advanced stats, Stolarz pulls away even more.

Hes currently first in the NHL in goals saved above expected per 60 minutes, with 0.95 GSAx/60.

Woll is in a very respectable 13th at 0.48, ahead of elite veteran starters such as Linus Ullmark, Jake Oettinger and Andrei Vasilevskiy, among others.

I think the thing you want to see with Stolarz is: Can he sustain that level of play while playing more games? Is what hes done a small sample size thing or something more? Because if he can play anywhere close to that in the playoffs, its going to be a massive difference in a series.

Advertisement But this is all a good problem to have, especially compared to some of their goaltending options in the past.

Woll and Stolarz, collectively, are probably the No.

1 reason to have optimism that the playoffs might be different this time around.

With Domi and Matthews back together, Willy and Johnny clicking, is it time to see if Marner can drive his own line to spread the scoring threat out more? Frank P.

Well, the Domi with Auston Matthews experiment didnt even last long enough for me to get to this question, which is telling.

Im not sure if Craig Berube is going to go back to it at all barring injuries, I doubt it but its probably worthwhile if only to try to get anything of value out of Domi, whos on pace for just 31 points and is playing without any confidence at all.

One thing I think we need to keep in mind, however, when it comes to keeping Matthews and Marner together, is the coaching staff uses them as a shutdown line, too.

Its not just about offence.

They typically eat the toughest minutes and drive play better than anyone, which is a powerful combination.

In a playoff series, theyre going to want a primary line they trust out against anyone, and with Domi there, that isnt going to be it.

At this point the Leafs hope is they can change their mix with a trade before the deadline, bringing in an impact player on the third line who is going to get more out of the bottom six (Domi especially).

Im skeptical thats going to be possible, as I wrote here , given what little is available on the trade market and the assets theyll be willing to move, so the question becomes: If they cant make a real upgrade, what then do they do with this lineup? As much as weve called for it, it doesnt feel like theyre going to split the Core Four onto three different lines until they can add another pivot.

If they were, it would have happened more often by the 55-game mark.

And, frankly, Im not sure they have enough talent to play with whoever would be left over in that scenario anyway, especially if one of them is going to be centred by Kampf or Pontus Holmberg.

Advertisement If they can add a good centre, however, its worth a real look.

The big thing the Leafs need to prepare for, however, is: What if they get into a playoff series and the Matthews-Marner and Tavares-William Nylander combinations on the top two lines go dry? Its happened again and again in the postseason, so it shouldnt be a surprise to this coaching staff if they struggle at times to produce in those tight games.

Getting some looks at different line combinations between now and then things Berube can go to when the ol standby isnt working is going to be imperative.

Otherwise, history may just repeat itself.

Can you put in perspective how rare what Bobby McMann is doing? ECHL to being an actual difference-maker in the NHL at almost 30 years old.

Dustin L.

I can try.

So McMann went to multiple NHL training camps on PTOs looking for contracts before he signed an AHL deal with the Toronto Marlies when he was 24 years old.

Then he turned pro at a late age, got into 22 regular-season ECHL games, and now already has 32 NHL goals in a short time frame (113 games).

Has anyone done that before? I reached out to ECHL stats guru Joe Babik, and he pointed out that only 45 players have even started in the ECHL and scored 30 career NHL goals ever .

Of that group, almost everyone had been in the ECHL only at a very young age and very fleetingly (like Andrew Brunette).

The best comparables I could find for McMann are players such as Alex Burrows (in the ECHL until age 23 then 1.5 years in the AHL before a nice NHL career as a valuable grinder), Rich Peverley (similar path) and Justin Danforth (in the ECHL until age 24 and only establishing himself as an NHL regular in his late 20s with Columbus the past couple seasons).

And I should mention that Yanni Gourde spent some time in the ECHL, too, and wasnt an NHL regular until age 26.

Even if his size was a big factor in that path for him.

The thing thats the most confusing about McMann is that he looks like the total package.

Hes not only big and a good skater, but he also has an elite shot that can beat goalies cleanly.

He also seems to complement high-skill players really well.

How does a player like that slip through multiple PTOs and struggle for years to get an NHL two-way offer? Theres probably a deeper story there thats worth telling, but I think a lot of it comes back to the player himself.

Hes a bright guy who worked his ass off and developed later than some others by putting in the extra miles and not giving up.

Advertisement He did come by way of the road less travelled playing for the Bonnyville Pontiacs (the first team I covered as a beat writer) in the AJHL so it makes sense there was a learning curve to overcome.

But the fact is most players who go that route and take that long to develop never get to where he is now as a legitimate top-six scorer on a good NHL team.

So, yeah, its pretty darn rare.

And found money for the Leafs.

Alex Steeves is lighting it up with the Marlies this year and is a pending RFA.

Do you think he holds any value around the league and could be a key piece in a trade? If he remains with the Leafs, could he contribute in a meaningful role next year or is he relegated to Quad A island for the rest of his career with the Leafs organization? Kurtis H.

Colleague Joshua Kloke had a good piece on Steeves recently thats recommended reading.

The reality is, no, he doesnt have any trade value, despite leading the AHL in goals.

Hes 25 years old and is actually on the verge of becoming a Group 6 UFA in the offseason, which means any non-playoff team that would want to give him an opportunity can have a shot at him in a few months time.

Given how little opportunity hes had with the Leafs, even with all of their forward injuries, I have a hard time seeing him coming back to the organization, too.

It really feels like his time has run its course, in that management views him as a AAAA player someone whos very good in the AHL but not likely to be a difference-maker in the NHL and wont shed a lot of tears when he leaves.

The differences between someone like Steeves and McMann are plenty, if were looking for a late-bloomer situation.

Theres the size difference, for one, plus skating, the big shot and some defensive awareness aspects.

Steeves may well prove the Leafs wrong and establish himself as an NHL player.

Hes certainly got some nice craftiness to his game thats allowing him to score in the minors.

But itll probably be in a depth role on a weaker team and under a coaching staff with a different view of what theyre looking for in the bottom six.

Advertisement Please tell me the Leafs dont play to re-sign Tavares to any kind of term just because hes had a bounce-back year? Hes old and slow; the last thing this team needs is to run it back again.

Anything short of a Giordano-style deal would be an overpay.

Call his bluff and see if he will actually pack up and move his family for a few million bucks when hes already made $100 million-plus.

Mike Well, hes not going to sign a Giordano contract.

Giordano was in his age-39 season when he signed a two-year, $800,000-a-season deal to play his final years out at home in Toronto as a depth defenceman.

Tavares will be 35 this fall and remains a 30-goal, 75-point player who could play another six or seven years and be productive, given the way he keeps himself in shape.

At that age, Giordano was making $6.75 million or 8.5 percent of the cap and playing more than 24 minutes a night.

(He won the Norris Trophy that season.) My read of where things are at with Tavares is, its not going to be a long-term signing.

Something like two to four years probably is the easiest to compromise on.

Where the AAV lands, however, is the big debate, especially with the cap set to skyrocket over the next three years.

Where I do agree with you is the Leafs should push for some sort of hometown discount here.

Joe Pavelski was putting up similar numbers when he signed a three-year, $7 million-a-season deal with Dallas in 2019, and thats going to be a hard number for the Leafs to fit in given their constraints even with the higher cap.

Itll be interesting to see where they land on a compromise deal, assuming it gets done.

And obviously any playoff success this spring should be a factor in the talks.

(Top photo of John Tavares and Joseph Woll: Rich Graessle / Getty Images).

This article has been shared from the original article on theathleticuk, here is the link to the original article.