The Maple Leafs Are Spending $32 Million on the Players Nobody Talks About

There’s an interesting thing hiding in the Toronto Maple Leafs’ salary numbers right now. Everybody looks at Auston Matthews at $13.25 million and William Nylander at $11.5 million and sees the obvious problem. Add Matthew Knies at $7.75 million, and those three players alone account for $32.5 million.

That’s a lot of money tied up in three forwards. But that isn’t really the whole story. What jumps out when you deconstruct Toronto’s forward salaries is how much money is being spent on the players underneath the stars. The Maple Leafs have $64.6 million committed to 14 forwards. That means the other 11 forwards are costing more than $32 million combined.

The Maple Leafs Are Paying for More Than Just Star Power

The old criticism of Toronto was pretty simple: too much money went to the stars, and not enough went to the players around them. That isn’t really what this roster looks like anymore.

Colton Sissons is at $4.25 million, Jack Roslovic at $4 million, Max Domi at $3.75 million, Dakota Joshua at $3.25 million and Nick Paul at $3.15 million. Then there’s Brandon Duhaime at $2.6 million and Teddy Blueger at $2.5 million. None of those players is being paid to carry the offence. They are being paid to fill specific jobs.

That may be the biggest clue to general manager John Chayka’s thinking. Toronto appears to be paying for versatility, physical play, faceoffs, penalty killing and players who can move up and down the lineup.

The Middle of the Lineup Is Suddenly Really Important

This is where the salary breakdown gets interesting. The Maple Leafs aren’t simply paying their stars and then looking for cheap players to fill the remaining spots. They are spending more than $32 million on 11 forwards who aren’t Matthews, Nylander or Knies.

It also means Toronto has less room to complain about a lack of depth if something goes wrong. Chayka has already invested heavily in it. The idea is that the team should have enough useful players that one injury or one bad matchup doesn’t suddenly expose a huge hole.

That makes sense for a team that has spent years discovering that playoff hockey can expose weaknesses that don’t always matter during the regular season.

This Roster May Be Harder to Fix at the Trade Deadline

The same salary structure that gives Toronto more depth could make the team harder to change. If the Maple Leafs discover in February that they need another top-six scorer or a top-four defenseman, Chayka isn’t going to have unlimited flexibility. A lot of the money is already committed, and the team is projected to be more than $2.7 million over the cap.

The more interesting question is whether Chayka has deliberately built this roster so that he won’t need to make a major correction. If Sissons, Roslovic, Joshua, Paul, Duhaime, Blueger and the rest actually give Toronto the kind of dependable depth it has been missing, perhaps the plan is to make smaller adjustments rather than another big deadline splash.

What the Salary Numbers Really Tell Us

That’s what makes this roster worth watching. The Maple Leafs aren’t simply expensive. They’re committed.

They have put a lot of money into Matthews, Nylander and Knies, but they have also put a surprising amount into the players underneath them. That tells us the organization isn’t just trying to build a team that can score in October. It is trying to build a team with enough different kinds of players to survive April.

There is some risk in that approach. If the depth contracts don’t work, Toronto won’t have much flexibility to change course. But if they do work, Chayka may have found something the Maple Leafs have been looking for for a long time: a roster where the stars don’t have to do everything themselves.