Team: 2023-24 Toronto Maple Leafs

Initial Creation Date: Jul. 2, 2023

Published: Jul. 2, 2023

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

This is the first of two companion ACGMs addressing the current Toronto roster. In this one, I try to illustrate the problem. In the second, I try to suggest the solution.

Joseph Woll is no longer waivers-exempt, so barring a goalie trade, this is what the roster would almost have to be if both Murray and Samsonov were retained. (And it's now too late to buy Murray out unless Samsonov requests arbitration.)

This looks unrealistic and downright unworkable to me. Among other things, it seems really odd to have 7 goaltenders under contract, including at least 3 who are projected to have NHL capability in the future.

So the most sensible game plan would appear to be to go with a Murray-Woll or Samsonov-Woll tandem, because trading Woll and having more than $8 million in goalies severely restricts the ability to improve the roster elsewhere.

Murray's contract is up in 2024 and he's an unlikely long-term solution, so trading him would seem like the simplest and best solution. The drawback there is that with his injury history and cap hit, he'll be seen as something of a cap dump because there aren't too many teams who are in the market for a 1A/1B goalie. (And his 10-team no-trade clause probably won't help, either.) This flaw is exacerbated by the fact that for the next three draft cycles Toronto doesn't have any second-round picks which would be the attractive incentive for an acquiring team to accept him. And Toronto's prospect pool is shallow enough that trading away first-round draft picks or prime prospects like Fraser Minten or Topi Niemela would be a damaging and even self-defeating way of addressing the issue.

In short, the bottom line I see from my chair is that keeping both Murray and Samsonov would be at the expense of building a decent bottom 6 because to me, what we see here is scary. And rectifying that problem will not be easy, or likely to be cheap.