Leafs quit holding out--offer Reinhart contract to Nylander instead

Pipe dream

1) Nylander is just hands down better than Rienhart, he's faster, more skilled and has a better shot.
2) Nylander wants a long term deal and so does the club
3) The longer it takes the better it is for the team. The 1st year cap hit goes up the longer it takes to sign him and the rest of the years go below the actual average.

Just be patient.

Leafs are a lot more fun with Tavares, they'll definitely add some wins

But to have a successful year and have a chance in the playoffs, they need to win the division so they can get out of the first round

Food for thought:
Tampa Bay 113 pts
Boston 112 pts
Toronto 105 pts

Assuming Tampa Bay is as good as last year, the team needs to aim for 9 more points. That's more than Tavares alone can be expected to provide, and Nylander being locked out might cost an extra 1 pt every 5 games played.

We will make the playoffs no matter what, but it's stupid that there were no negotiations until recently. It should never have been a take-it-or-leave it $6x8 year ultimatum even if you expected the agent to play hardball, there should have always been alternative offers so that the talking never stopped.

At this point the short term bridge deal is the only way both sides can come together.
Dubas gets to delay a Nylander extension until Marleau + Horton are gone, or make a trade when the terms are favourable. Plus he preserves the bulk of RFA years to dilute the cap hit on an extension. Plus he doesn't poison the most important extensions of Matthews and Marner. Plus eliminates an offer sheet.
Nylander will have a guaranteed minimum salary from arbitration, and have the chance to further demonstrate his value for the big money extension he wants to attract.

So just do it and move on.

I don't understand why either a two year bridge hasn't been offered by either party and accepted by the other. Seems like the solution since the long term deal isn't happen. I think the Reinhart is a good comparable. Even if the Leafs would up the price to even 4.5m....it really doesn't affect their cap.
Horton's contract doesn't affect the Leafs at all in 2019/20

The value of RFA years is pretty much fixed under the CBA, and there isn't much to gain (or lose) over just 2 seasons.
The only reason why Nylander isn't playing is because management haven't formally made a 2 year bridge deal offer yet. Nylander has no incentive to decline a deal covering only RFA years.

An 8 year extension signed 1 year ago would have been ideal.
We know management moved from a $6x8 offer to something shorter term. I had hoped they were about to sign the bridge deal, but given the wait maybe it was just $5x6.
The reason to do this is that it's easier to pay Nylander using this season's unused cap space, which they can't carry forward -- but that's like $2 million of additional spending this season compared to the bridge deal, tops.
But that overlooks a 2 year bridge opens up a tonne of cap room in the short term, and the cost is only the later increased cap hit by offering Nylander a 3RFA/5UFA extension instead of a 5RFA/3UFA extension.

I'd rather win the division this year than open up $300k of cap space over the next 5 seasons (at which point Nylander becomes a UFA sooner than with a bridge deal).
Wait 12 games to sign, and another 3 games to practice before playing. 15 games will cost about 3 points in the standings which will seem huge in February.


for further context, adding 9 pts is a lot harder when you've already got 105.

49 W - 26 L - 7 OTL

For every L and OTL, they need to convert ~15%, between 1 in 6 and 1 in 7, into a W
Furthermore, those Ws will need to predominately come from the best teams in the league
Put another way, 10 times in a season you'll need to go from a 3/7 playoff round loser to a 4/7 playoff round winner
It's easy to imagine missing Nylander could cause the Leafs to lose a round in the playoffs, when the goal is to win 10 in a row.