There’s no reason to worry about a Matthew Knies offer sheet

With all due respect to the idea of a Matthew Knies offer sheet, I’m not seeing it.

I get it. Talking about the idea of an offer sheet is always compelling. One team takes a big swing, and a lot of draft picks could change hands. There is almost certainly an overpayment. It’s disruptive and disruptive transactions are fun, especially in the middle of summer when there is absolutely nothing else to talk about.

The thing is the Matthew Knies situation doesn’t meet a lot of the criteria for an offer sheet to make any sense.

The first is that the Leafs have more than enough money to match anything in the ballpark of a sane offer for Knies. If someone wants to be nutty and offer $9M AAV for seven years, the Leafs will roll their eyes about the slight overpayment and match. They’d likely do that right up until the $9.36 AAV threshold before the return becomes two 1sts, a 2nd, and a 3rd round pick. At that point, with all due respect to the talented Leaf winger, the combination of the return and cap space as well as Knies being on a contract unlikely to provide any surplus value makes it too easy to walk away.

The surplus value for a very good player matters and is a barrier that a lot of opposing teams are going to weigh heavily before considering the suggested annual eight figure commitment to Knies. His numbers as a second-year player are outstanding, but teams will likely acknowledge those numbers at least somewhat came with the benefit of playing with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner. Without an elite talent to drive production, there is a pretty big question of what Knies can do on his own. The answer is probably a lot but is it $10M+ worth of a lot?

When looking at the contract comparable out there I think Frank Seravalli hit the nail on the head with the Wyatt Johnston number of $8.4M. They are not identical players, with Johnston being a centre and having offensive outputs beyond Knies’ at the time of contract negotiations, but when you factor in the premium placed on heavy hitters that can finish, as well as the procrastination in getting a deal done, the $8.4M feels like one the Leafs would be content to take with a long term commitment. The Leafs would also likely entertain matching any offer sheet that falls in the ballpark of 1st, 2nd, 3rd round pick compensation in the table below:

The best use of an offer sheet on Knies would probably just be a predatory 5-year deal at $9.36M AAV that the Leafs would certainly match and be forced to kick rocks over the shorter than desired term and the higher than desired cap hit. Knies would still be a Leaf.

The second you start looking above that number and contemplate the compensation of two 1st round picks instead of one and the Leafs retaining $9.36M of cap space to backfill Knies, moving on grows in appeal.

As talented as Knies is and no matter how much he is the perfect fit for the Leafs in an archetype of player they have struggled to find for the past two decades, this would be an overcommitment and the Leafs can angrily move on.

Knies is a rare talent but even as a rare talent there is a price.

The good news for the Mape Leafs is that there really isn’t any reason to believe it would come to this. There are only 15 teams in the league with the assets capable of making this offer sheet and there are barriers to a number of them:

A Knies offer sheet would either involve a lottery team committing to him as “their guy” and foregoing a couple of years of further high value picks, or a contender buying into Knies being their missing piece and shuffling out some salary to make it happen. Others like the Penguins and Bruins are in a situation where you’d have to pull off Olympic level mental gymnastics to imagine why it makes sense for them. I guess the argument is that it only takes one team or only takes one team not on this list to reacquire their previously owned draft pick to take a run at Knies.

When you look at previous offer sheets that were successful, the Dylan Holloway and Phillip Broberg ones were heavily based in the fact that the Oilers didn’t have cap space and that the Blues could acquire them without giving up much in the way of draft pick compensation to the Oilers. That certainly doesn’t apply here.

The Jesperi Kotkaniemi was a retaliatory move to the Sebastian Aho offer sheet and one that was likely meant to be predatory and backfired or at least came with just the one year commitment to the inflated salary. This doesn’t really apply to the Knies situation at all.

The Sebastian Aho offer sheet might be the best comparator for a potential Knies offer sheet as it was about targeting a good player just entering their prime. The problem was that the offer was grounded in reality and while it might not have been as much as the Hurricanes were looking to spend on Aho at the time, it was a no-brainer to sign him to that, and the contract looked very reasonable for its entire duration. In some ways Brad Treliving might like the idea of someone throwing a $9.3M AAV at Knies because it makes quick work for him and absolves him of at least some blame, although in a perfect world the Maple Leafs would have signed Knies long ago and this long-winded post about world’s most unlikely offer sheet would have never occurred.