Now that we’ve had some time to settle following the opening of free agency, it’s time to give general manager Brad Treliving his flowers for the John Tavares and Matthew Knies contract extensions.
With the Mitch Marner contract saga dangling over everybody’s heads all season long, and even more so after the Toronto Maple Leafs‘ playoff run ended, everybody wanted a quick, painless negotiation for Tavares and Knies. It may not have been as quick as anybody wanted, but once the numbers were revealed, it’s clear that the process was closer to painless than painful. In the end, Tavares walked away with a four-year contract worth $4.38 million annually, and Knies got a six-year extension with an average annual value (AAV) of $7.75 million. Considering speculation that the former could have gotten as much as $8 million on the open market and the latter could have commanded as much as $10 million on an eight-year deal, the Leafs made out with a real best case scenario here, and Treliving deserves credit for it.
For the longest time, and still to this day, the thought of a contract negotiation involving a Leafs star player sends shudders down everybody’s spines. All we’ve heard for the past half decade is how the Leafs messed up the handling of the Core Four’s initial contracts, specifically Marner’s. Combine that with the original signing of Tavares to a contract worth $11 million annually, and you’ve got an annual narrative about how you’ve got four forwards taking up 50% of the cap and the evergreen debate over whether you can win with a roster construction like that or not. Regardless of whether you believe Marner played a significant role in the Maple Leafs’ inability to go deep in the playoffs, it felt like his time in Toronto would come to an end following the 2024-25 season either way, unless the Leafs won the Cup and he was willing to return at a team-friendly rate.
So, now you’ve got Marner with one foot out the door essentially, all of these reports about how much Tavares and Knies could get on the open market, and it’s the weekend of the draft with still no deal in place for either player. It must have felt like Groundhog Day for the fanbase. Thankfully, Groundhog Day falls in February, not June.
First, it was the Tavares extension. There was initial worry that, between the reported amount he could get on the market and the fact that a deal wasn’t done immediately, maybe his heart was elsewhere. Then, David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reported that the Leafs offered Tavares a three-year deal worth under $4 million annually. Once this report came out, all of the apprehension plummeted. Any number south of $4 million annually is in the ballpark of a quarter of what Tavares got on his last deal, which would be a borderline egregious pay cut, even if disguised as a hometown discount. When you hear about a number like this being offered by the Maple Leafs, you’d expect the deal to come somewhere in the middle, perhaps in the ballpark of $5-6 million.
Instead, Tavares came back at a price slightly higher than the Maple Leafs’ original offer. $4.38 million is a little over a third of what Tavares made on his last deal, and considering he’s still only 34 and scored 38 goals last season, locking up a middle-six centre at a price cheaper than what the Los Angeles Kings signed Cody Ceci for comes off as highway robbery. Ask Tavares, though, and it’s not just about the money.
“My belief in us to win is extremely high and I want to keep forward and giving it every crack we’ve got to get where we want to get to,” Tavares told media via Zoom after signing the extension. “I get to do what I love, what I’ve been doing since I was a kid. And even though I obviously left some money out there, I’ve done pretty well. I’m still doing pretty well.”
While everybody assumed that Tavares would be back with the Leafs on a cheaper deal, the Knies extension was a little bit greyer. Not that there was any worry that Knies would command a huge raise and hold the Leafs at gunpoint, but it’s a little different when you’re talking about extending a young, future star forward as opposed to a Toronto-born veteran on the back nine of his career. Treliving acknowledged that the Tavares deal was a little bit higher priority considering the July 1 deadline, but remained optimistic that both players would be done and have new deals sooner rather than later. Then, two days before free agency, the Leafs announced a six-year extension at just under $8 million annually. Between the end of season press conference and Knies’ media availability after signing his extension, he made sure to acknowledge that the thought of an offer sheet had never crossed his mind.
“No that wasn’t on my mind at all,” Knies said when asked about the offer sheet possibility. “I wanna be a Toronto Maple Leaf for good. I love it there and I call it home now.”
For all of the faults Kyle Dubas had during his tenure as Leafs general manager, there’s a legitimate argument to be made now that Brendan Shanahan was the true mastermind behind the Leafs’ initial contract negotiations with the core players. Sure, there was speculation of this before and to assume Shanahan had zero say in those negotiations would have been naive. But, when the first two contract extensions of the post-Shanahan era end up being an extreme hometown discount and a team-friendly deal for a rising star that benefits both the team and the player, it shines a light on how the operation was running before this summer. Simply put, it’s a stark contrast from the awkward Mitch Marner/Kyle Dubas press conference after the former signed his $10.6 million deal, in which Dubas admitted that both the player would have wanted more while the team would have wanted to pay less. In other words, ‘neither of us are too thrilled with the outcome here’.
Brad Treliving is not perfect. He probably didn’t have to sign Ryan Reaves to a multi-year deal. He probably shouldn’t have done the same with David Kampf. And maybe, trading a first round pick and top prospect for Scott Laughton isn’t looking like its aged too well. But, in the context of the first contract negotiations with star players without Shanahan breathing down his neck, he knocked it out of the park and deserves his flowers for it.
