I think Matthews at 10.5 for 6 years would have been a satisfying contract for everyone.

Marner at 9 would have been fine.

Nylander at 6 would have been solid.

However it is all still overshadowed by Marleau for 3 years rather than 2, and Zaitsev contract. Those two really f’d over our team.

I loved Lou as a GM in Toronto and in NYI however his biggest failure was not getting that right shot Defenceman we needed back in 2018. There were some available but he didn't go after them. Nylander is honestly paid reasonable and Matthews is as well (he's literally nominated for the Hart), Marner however is the one that annoys me. He should've take either a 8x8 or 8.5x8. He got to greedy. Literally every penny he missed he could've made up in endorsements

Well Matthews would’ve signed the max $$$ offer sheet rumoured by ARI and either TOR would’ve matched increasing his cap hit by quite a bit or lost a franchise center

And Marner way 6 points shy of 100, so can’t say he didn’t deserve it (also didn’t help that TOR just signed Matthews turning him into a comparable)

Dubas is one of the best gm’s in the NHL imo

so your plan was to pay matthews less than Eichel and Mcdavid after he had 40 goals in his rookie year

hes for sure gonna stay with the team and not sign an offersheet for way more

same with marner

It will always be the JT contact the f’d this rebuild IMO

considering he had 40 goals in his rookie year followed by 2 30 goal seasons I dont think 10.5 would have cut it either. Considering Mcdavid was making 12.5 mill, Matthews being the incredible goal scorer he was had to make at least 11mill.

Evolving Hockey actually said Matthews contract rn is right on the ball and he actually could have made more. Projections at the time were 11-12mill

to me 11 x 8 would have been fine. His current contract would honestly be fine if he signed 7-8 years instead of 5.

Matthews is like a top 5 player in the league. Judging performance on goals scored - an already flawed metric cause of its sampling issue, in a small sample; a few playoff games, is just bad everything. Bad methodology, bad maths, bad philosophy. Why?

Marner, on the other hand, should've never gotten that crazy amount of money. And the reason he did get that in the first place comes down to the same type of issue. Ultimately poor methods of evaluating player impact. He was good his contract year, but Tavares was great.

I rate Nylander slightly above Marner. And I have for a few years. I think that's a reasonable position. But if you do it solely because Marner didn't produce in a playoffs series, you're doing two wrongs to get a right.

Marner had an exact comparable in Aho of Canes. For the two previous the two had identical, goals, points, and plus minus. Aho signed for 8.5m X 5. Add 500,000 for a sixth year, Marner at 9m X 6 or 2m cheaper than his 11m contract.
At the time I find hard to believe that Matthews was worthy of being paid the second highest contact in the league or a shorter term deal.
Eichel signed 10m X 8 the year before Matthews, so Matthews at 10,5m or even 11m X 8 would have been OK. For five years it should have 9.5m
So the Leafs easily paid 4m per year too much for Matthews and Marner.

To those who think the Leafs could have Matthews to an offer sheet. Well they would have 11.6m to spend on other player(s) and had four first rounders.
Which is better.

And don't blame Dubas for the RFA signings entirely. Leafs have the most highly paid executives in the league. Where were those guys guiding negotiations along with Dubas/

Matthews is worth $10M+ at minimum. He's worth more than Eichel and no one complains about that contract. Matthews should be the second highest paid player in the league and he's just barely 3rd right now. His contract is fine.

Marner should be at least $9.5M as he's a top 5 scorer that plays good defence. He's not overpaid by much, maybe $1M but that's not much in the league these days.

Marner didn't care about other comparables. He wanted the Matthews comparable because if Matthews was paid what he got, why shouldn't Marner when he led the team in scoring more than Matthews did at that point in their careers. So Marner had justification that if Matthews was worth that much, so was Marner. In reality, Marner is overpaid but like $1M. and Matthews is fine with where he's at. You argue that he should have gotten $10.5M over 8 years but there were numerous reports out that Arizona would have offered him the max if he got to free agency. And even Toronto said they were around $13M on a 8 year deal. Matthews is far better than Eichel and always has been, so that comparable isn't good and $10.5M over 8 years would never have been signed. So they had to go shorter to fit him in the cap.

Neither of them are as much Dubas' fault as they are the players. It's the players final decision whether or not they wanna sign and at what amount. I don't see why Dubas takes all the blame but not nearly enough gets put to the players anymore.

At the time he deserved nine, now he’s definitely worth 11.6. But marner was and still is worth 8 since he plays with the best goal scorer in the league and most of his points are assists. Not taking anything away from him at all he’s a player anyone would love on their team, just not worth 11.

From an outsiders perspective dubas messed up by signing matthews before marner. He should've took care of both contracts at the same time. The second marner saw what Matthews got he was dead set on that number. Also tavares was such an unnecessary signing. They had a perfectly fine 2C in kadri (yeah yeah suspensions). They needed defense and instead they tried to be the penguins instead of building a complete team.

I agree with the first part, but now with JT, they got defence. It was great this year and ik the playoffs. They would’ve had jvr and kadri together making 11.5, and wouldn’t have had bozak either bc they would’ve had to sign JVR, who was aging. JT>Kadri and JVR.

not even close. Eichel had less points yet got 10mill. How the **** do you say Matthews deserved 9 mill when he had more points than Eichel and is one of the best goal scorers in the NHL. Flawed logic right there

Year 1 Matthews had 40 goals in 82 games for a total of 69 points
Year 2 Matthews had 34 goals in 62 games for a total of 63 points
Year 3 Matthews had 37 goals in 68 games for a total of 73 points

Year 1 Eichel had 24 goals in 81 games for a total of 56 points
Year 2 Eichel had 24 goals in 61 games for a total of 57 points
Year 3 Eichel had 25 goals in 67 games for a total of 64 points

and you want to give him less facepalm moment right there

I mean, you can talk about Marner being over paid, but if you think Matthews is 3 million over paid on top of the extra that it woulda cost to get 8 years, you really have no idea how much goal scorers are worth

They are worth more than that. Imo both of them got around 1.5M AAV more than they should have. Matthews around 10-10.5 and Marner around 9.5 wouldve been fine

Mikko Rantanen scores at a higher pints per game than Marner the year Marner got 94 points. He also scored a higher points per game the season before. Both players signed their contracts in the same offseason.

Why does Marner get 1.653 million more per season? There’s no reason for it.

Matthews is similar. He signed the least team friendly contract possible. He’s going to be a UFA in 3 years and has the 3rdd highest cap hit in the league. It was the same cap hit percentage as Crosby’s was when he first signed his contract. Only difference, matthews signed for 5 years, and crosby signed for 12!! How does that make any sense at all?for that cap hit matthews should have been an 8 year deal. Giving him 5 and walking him straight to UFA at that cap hit is insane.

First of all calm tf down bud, I’m just saying I think $9M was an optimal contract for him at the time. 10 was the most realistic.

The frustrating part for me if i were a leafs fan would be the term. Auston Matthews is the best natural goal scorer in the NHL in my opinion. If the leafs locked him up for 8 years, taking him all the way through his prime at 11.634 i would have said that’s a totally fine contract. The issue as I see it, is that Matthews won on both term and dollars. He got a player friendly term that gets him to UFA at the ripe old age of 26 I believe, and got premium UFA money in the process.

Marner’s deal just stunk from the word go. 8x9 would have been fine. 3x6.5 would have been fine. 6x8 would have been okay. But 6x11…sheesh. I just don’t get how that contract gets signed.

Matthews probably deserves 15M$ tho

Particularly for how rare an elite G scoring skillset is

McDavid deserves 20M$

It's funny that hockey never took on a more exponential $ curve for special players (that baseball & basketball have) even Gretzky & Mario in prime weren't paid exponentially to extents while outscoring the rest of the league by ridiculous margins

Tbh being thankful that's not the case seems valid and celebrating having two special players at a bit lower cap hit as aging Doughty & declining Jeff skinner rn

matthews is worth every penny and then some, he deserves to be a top 5 paid player in the league easily. The mistake was marner was delusional enough to think he’s worth the same, and the leafs didn’t give him enough tough love, they needed to put him in his place and get that contract down to the 8.5-9mil range. He’s not the geno to matthews’s sid, he’s the backstrom to his ovie and playmakers are worth less, you pay for goals.

Marmer so tricky to appraise fully 🤕

Absolute hockey genius. His footwork, puck control, awareness, agility, playmaking... all top 5 in the NHL. But simultaneously doesn't really drive play etc.

So idk maybe he is worth 8M$ but I don't have too much issue with him at 11M given his rare brilliance; to some extents "paying for specialness" is valid

A+ input ✔

Even bad epistemology lol yeah

Makes me wonder what alternatives were available to Toronto when Marner was a pending RFA and what alternatives could be (Bjorkstrand + Werenski) ?

Bjorkstrand at the time just an up and comer

But absolutely superb underlying numbers

I agree with everything. I’m just saying that AT THE TIME, I feel Matthews was worth 9 to maybe 10

It’s this 👆🏻right here.
The Leafs were coming off a season in which they won 49 games, had two hard fought series against WSH then BOS. The Tavares signing was so unnecessary. That signing rushed the rebuild. It also propped up Marner to have a 94 point season and easily gave him leverage in his negotiations. Of course he is going to ask for Matthews/JT money.

If they had just stuck to the course and kept building IMO they would be in a much better situation.

Flat cap or not having over 40+ mil tied to 4 FWDs has failed. And now we have to have discussions about trading a 24 year old winger just to create cap space. 🤦‍♂️