Instant grade: Jake McCabe, Maple Leafs strike team-friendly extension

Jake McCabe will be a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs for the foreseeable future, reaching a five-year extension worth $4.51 million annually on Monday.

McCabe is now a core member of the team’s contention window in the next phase of the Auston Matthews era, and will be alongside Morgan Rielly and Chris Tanev for the long haul.

Here’s our quick analysis on the Maple Leafs reaching a five-year pact with McCabe:

Why the McCabe extension is a mutual victory for team and player

McCabe clearly wanted to remain with the Maple Leafs for the long haul and this new deal provides him with the long-term security he was looking for. The Athletic’s Chris Johnston indicated that McCabe left money on the table, and it’s almost certain that he would’ve received more money elsewhere if he tested free agency. In and of itself, that’s not necessarily a win for a player but McCabe struck a reasonable deal which gets him the term he was seeking, and the deferred value of the contract still gets him the money he was looking for.

The salary cap is projected to rise, and now McCabe joins Tanev and Rielly on long-term pacts, with the inference that Ben Danford and Topi Niemela will eventually graduate to the Maple Leafs during this five-year window. For a Maple Leafs team that is win-now mode for this season — and really, for the duration of Auston Matthews and William Nylander’s tenures — it indicates that retaining quality players for the next three seasons is paramount to their goal of winning a Stanley Cup imminently.

It’s possible the deal ages badly in the final two years, but that’s not a real consideration for Brad Treliving and his staff. The next three years are what matters, and he can buy himself a window to get out of cap hell — essentially, this is what he’s been tasked with since taking on the job, now he’s building the roster in his own visage.

McCabe is a plus-skater with physicality, who routinely stands up for his teammates in skirmishes, can log heavy minutes against top-six forwards, can be used on the penalty kill and helped Simon Benoit produce the best results of his career last season as his primary partner. The 31-year-old has been primarily used with Oliver Ekman-Larsson, providing the Maple Leafs with arguably their strongest top-four defence pairings of the past decade.