I mean, it might be in the pipes at head office right now, but this article is only quoting Friedman saying its happening, not that its done.
mikesully374826
$11.5m for a 27 year old with a career high of 87 points is absolutely wild.
Gear4Vegito
This place is going to be insufferable on a game-to-game basis for a while.
Whatever it’s done. I’m happy. Let’s move on.
B-Rayy06
On the one hand, William Nylander is a leaf for 17 years!
On the other hand, 11.5 is a lot whether you want to admit it or not.
I would rather William Nylander be a maple leaf than not be a maple leaf
Throwaway9465683826
But 88 for 88 had a such nice ring to it, will!
homemadejelly
Leafiest contract ever. He’s never going to live up to this contract and there is no way to move him.
RJL85
“That’s too much money for too long and I don’t like the NMC”.
There, I did the Modern NHL Contract Discourse. Can we move on now.
BigMick20
I hope Willy is up for the challenge of being a 40+ goal / 110+ point winger for the next 8 years.
SpicyP43905
Let’s go.
But also fuck.
JamesCurtis24
You know what’s going to look cheap in 2 years? The Panthers signing Tkachuck to 11.5% of the cap after a 40G, 109P season at the age of 24.
The “This will look cheap in x year” argument is such a stupid one. The cap goes up for everyone. Every bit you think this deal looks better in 2 years, it looks that much better for the teams who signed their comparable to reasonable 11.5-11.9% of the cap, which equates to about 10M AAV today.
This now rolls back to down to Marner. It’ll roll down to Knies, not in terms of Knies’ $ figure, but the philosophy that you get the moon, the sun and the stars on your contract. Not a penny less. It’s why you lose players like Hyman. It’s why you have a D core of half league minimum guys.
You don’t think when Pastrnak or Tkachuck signed it wasn’t known the cap was about to sky rocket? Gaudreau and Huberdeau signed after 115P seasons, we knew the cap was going to sky rocket then, yet they all fell in line with the comparables. Same goes for Kucherov, Point, Rantanen etc. Before you spout off that Gaudreau and Huberdeau suck, it’s irrelevant. They were 115P point players the day they signed their deals. You can’t factor in the hindsight years later.
Nylander is overpaid. Marner will now be overpaid again. However good it looks in 2 years, it just looks better for all those other teams and still leaves them with that much more flexibility.
This is an L. And now Nylander has to be a 40G, 110P player just to live up to it. Good luck gambling on that for a player who is 28-years-old next year and his career history does not support that. Players don’t historically trend upward into their late 20s and early 30s. It’s a MASSIVE gamble to expect Nylander, with his history, to be an 11.5M player more than 3 years into this deal. It’s the snowball effect this has on the cap culture. It rolls down, and it adds up. Here’s to hoping Tavares signs for league minimum on an extension.
Tanzanite_Shark
Well this is what it cost us to get it done between summer and now. It’s business. We didn’t lock him up earlier and he played out of his mind.
Happy to have my favorite leaf ever since he was drafted.
lLikeCats
Is 11.5 really a lot? Unless there is another pandemic coming, the cap will increase.
If guys like Dubois, Suzuki, Caufield and Norris make 8M+, how is Nylander not worth 11.5M?
Tavares and Nylander will just swap contracts after next year.
Next year is going to be a tough one though.
TheBombersFlow
At least Dodgers didn’t sign him
housington-the-3rd
Can anyone explain how we went from not wanting to give him 10 in the summer to 11.25? I know he’s been good but is 4 months of production really worth that large of a jump?
peanut-arms
It’s strange that the deal isn’t official anywhere else except for Sportsnet just including Friedman’s “closing in” tweet.
runstrawberry
Bettman is now going to announce the cap is only going up by $1.2m
n3rdsm4sh3r
No matter how much the cap goes up, Toronto *insists* on giving most of their cap to four guys. And what’s annoying about that is, none of them will take a little less. What are you getting with $11.2m a year that you can’t get with $10m? It’s so goddamn frustrating.
Odion13
What a terrible contract
Volderon90
Friedman said on 32 that they tried to find a D for a comparable to the Nylander contract but couldn’t so they decided to keep him.
And to be honest I don’t blame them. The teams with top D aren’t getting rid of them. Plus what are you gonna do with Nylander money with another top forward? For almost his money you get a Bertuzzi and a Domi. I know which one I’m picking. Nylander all the way.
2 Seasons from Now: Matthews/Nylander (24.75M), plus Marner (12.5M?) and Tavares (5M?) Total = 42.25M possible.
So over their last contracts to this contract, they might have cost us a collective 1-2M to keep all four together with a rising cap?
EddyMcDee
Our cap is so fucked. Marner gonna need to take a cut or he might be gone.
Will is older than Auston and Mitch. This deal won’t age well.
JustAnAsteroid
Time to buy my 88 jersey.
hunglikeafireant
Wooo good shit baby. Willy gonna lead the charge.
Meatandtomatoes
My take is that willy is playing the best hockey of his career right now and we going to be paying him for this production which he is unlikely to sustain for eight years
MastermindMogwai
I’m just glad I’ll get 8 more years of use out of my Nylander jersey
callmejohndy
Knowing he commutes to home games, it now must be asked what happens first: the end of this new contract or Line 5 (Eglinton Crosstown) finally opening?
Worried_Gold_9320
NYLANDER IS A MAPLE LEAF. For about his entire career, this is a W plain and simple
Kinglokner16
Do I love the player? yes, is 11.5 too much? yes, is a full NTC extremely dumb? yes….
BUT GO LEAFS GO
GWsublime
I love that we have Willy back but this is a really bad contract that may truly cause issues both short and long term. 8 years takes willy well into the period where he will and should decline. 11.5 is an overpay of something like 2.5 million and puts us in a very difficult spot next year as well as doubling down on a cap structure that hasn’t worked well for us. The NMC means we’re all in on this cap structure effectively indefinitely.
I think this is worse than any contract Dubas signed during his tenure.
CamThompson
It’s a lot of money, way more than I would have been comfortable with before the season and while it might not be an overpay it certainly isn’t a deal.
But at the same time, Willy has been one of my favourite players during his time here and I like watching my favourite players play on my favourite team. As a fan, this contract makes me happy. It’s fun to watch good players, and players of this calibre tend to have the most repeatable performance. Between him, Rielly, and Auston all locked up for the foreseeable future, it’s a good time to be a fan.
Next year is when the cap crunch is going to be truly felt from this deal, since for 25-26 and onwards we should expect Tavares to come back at a substantially reduced rate. And even with Willy and Auston’s extensions, we should still be able to field a comparable, competitive roster.
The onus is on Treliving now. There’s plenty of money to fill out the roster and we have useful players on ELCs or low-cost deals. We should be able to re-sign Bertuzzi (or a Bertuzzi-type), find a Brodie replacement at a similar-ish cap hit. But what Brad can’t do is miss on another Klingberg deal, or really any deal in the 3-5mil range. Those have to be prudent, effective signings.
Brinbe
I truly can’t stand people whining about this deal. Willy is the exact guy they should be betting on to be a core member of this team for the future. He delivers.
He’s only spent the entirety of his career so far shutting up every hater along the way, so it’s par for the course.
There are other players/bigger issues if you wanna talk money, but they don’t get the same scrutiny.
But yeah, I’m not gonna be complaining about keeping on one of the most dynamic offensive players we’ve seen don a Buds jersey in recent franchise history.
Jaymesned
As long as we keep paying Brandon Pridham to solve our cap problems, we’re good. I, for one, say thank you Willy for staying! I don’t envy future Brandon Pridham though.
ATARI2600s
LFG.. ordering the jersey now
cx_fan
This was a deal that needed to be done. Glad that’s out of the way and we can focus on the getting the cup.
drakeberehowsky
Everyone thought he’d get $88m to match his jersey number, but he got $92m to match his dad’s
LeafsFan8406
So the alternative reality is willy walks ..pizza boy freaks out and signs bert to a 5 x 5 mil contract …so let’s be happy we have two franchise corner stones locked up into their thirties
Chtholly13
Only leaf forward out of the big 3 who signed for 8 years. Dude got paid the cheapest out of the big 4 despite playing just as well as them but we expect him to take the discount
Arcadia_minuet
I am so glad! He is my favourite leaf!
WaffleStone
can’t wait to see a million people make fun of the leafs then the same million people complain about people talking about the leafs all the time
three_tblsp_buttah
Anyone see the clip of him talking in the scrum – (paraphrasing) “without even thinking about it. Toronto is home.”
Bring it home Willy. Bring it home.
Johnny-Edge
What are we paying a GM for? Nylander got an astronomical number. He got the term on an astronomical number. He go a full NMC. He got a ton up front in signing bonuses. He got everything he could ever dream of.
Is he worth it? I have no idea, that’s not my job. What I do know though is that I could have negotiated this deal, and I’m a fuckin idiot. “Hey Willy, what do you want? This? Ok sounds good.” See, we did it!
How do the Leafs so consistently get bent over in every negotiation? It’s not even statistically possible. What is it about this club that they just cave to every demand? I just don’t get it.
44 Comments
Nice!!! Will Nye the leafs guy.
Full nmc
I mean, it might be in the pipes at head office right now, but this article is only quoting Friedman saying its happening, not that its done.
$11.5m for a 27 year old with a career high of 87 points is absolutely wild.
This place is going to be insufferable on a game-to-game basis for a while.
Whatever it’s done. I’m happy. Let’s move on.
On the one hand, William Nylander is a leaf for 17 years!
On the other hand, 11.5 is a lot whether you want to admit it or not.
I would rather William Nylander be a maple leaf than not be a maple leaf
But 88 for 88 had a such nice ring to it, will!
Leafiest contract ever. He’s never going to live up to this contract and there is no way to move him.
“That’s too much money for too long and I don’t like the NMC”.
There, I did the Modern NHL Contract Discourse. Can we move on now.
I hope Willy is up for the challenge of being a 40+ goal / 110+ point winger for the next 8 years.
Let’s go.
But also fuck.
You know what’s going to look cheap in 2 years? The Panthers signing Tkachuck to 11.5% of the cap after a 40G, 109P season at the age of 24.
The “This will look cheap in x year” argument is such a stupid one. The cap goes up for everyone. Every bit you think this deal looks better in 2 years, it looks that much better for the teams who signed their comparable to reasonable 11.5-11.9% of the cap, which equates to about 10M AAV today.
This now rolls back to down to Marner. It’ll roll down to Knies, not in terms of Knies’ $ figure, but the philosophy that you get the moon, the sun and the stars on your contract. Not a penny less. It’s why you lose players like Hyman. It’s why you have a D core of half league minimum guys.
You don’t think when Pastrnak or Tkachuck signed it wasn’t known the cap was about to sky rocket? Gaudreau and Huberdeau signed after 115P seasons, we knew the cap was going to sky rocket then, yet they all fell in line with the comparables. Same goes for Kucherov, Point, Rantanen etc. Before you spout off that Gaudreau and Huberdeau suck, it’s irrelevant. They were 115P point players the day they signed their deals. You can’t factor in the hindsight years later.
Nylander is overpaid. Marner will now be overpaid again. However good it looks in 2 years, it just looks better for all those other teams and still leaves them with that much more flexibility.
This is an L. And now Nylander has to be a 40G, 110P player just to live up to it. Good luck gambling on that for a player who is 28-years-old next year and his career history does not support that. Players don’t historically trend upward into their late 20s and early 30s. It’s a MASSIVE gamble to expect Nylander, with his history, to be an 11.5M player more than 3 years into this deal. It’s the snowball effect this has on the cap culture. It rolls down, and it adds up. Here’s to hoping Tavares signs for league minimum on an extension.
Well this is what it cost us to get it done between summer and now. It’s business. We didn’t lock him up earlier and he played out of his mind.
Happy to have my favorite leaf ever since he was drafted.
Is 11.5 really a lot? Unless there is another pandemic coming, the cap will increase.
If guys like Dubois, Suzuki, Caufield and Norris make 8M+, how is Nylander not worth 11.5M?
Tavares and Nylander will just swap contracts after next year.
Next year is going to be a tough one though.
At least Dodgers didn’t sign him
Can anyone explain how we went from not wanting to give him 10 in the summer to 11.25? I know he’s been good but is 4 months of production really worth that large of a jump?
It’s strange that the deal isn’t official anywhere else except for Sportsnet just including Friedman’s “closing in” tweet.
Bettman is now going to announce the cap is only going up by $1.2m
No matter how much the cap goes up, Toronto *insists* on giving most of their cap to four guys. And what’s annoying about that is, none of them will take a little less. What are you getting with $11.2m a year that you can’t get with $10m? It’s so goddamn frustrating.
What a terrible contract
Friedman said on 32 that they tried to find a D for a comparable to the Nylander contract but couldn’t so they decided to keep him.
And to be honest I don’t blame them. The teams with top D aren’t getting rid of them. Plus what are you gonna do with Nylander money with another top forward? For almost his money you get a Bertuzzi and a Domi. I know which one I’m picking. Nylander all the way.
Today: Matthews 11.640M, Tavares 11M, Marner 10.903M, Nylander 7.962M. Total: 41.235M
2 Seasons from Now: Matthews/Nylander (24.75M), plus Marner (12.5M?) and Tavares (5M?) Total = 42.25M possible.
So over their last contracts to this contract, they might have cost us a collective 1-2M to keep all four together with a rising cap?
Our cap is so fucked. Marner gonna need to take a cut or he might be gone.
Will is older than Auston and Mitch. This deal won’t age well.
Time to buy my 88 jersey.
Wooo good shit baby. Willy gonna lead the charge.
My take is that willy is playing the best hockey of his career right now and we going to be paying him for this production which he is unlikely to sustain for eight years
I’m just glad I’ll get 8 more years of use out of my Nylander jersey
Knowing he commutes to home games, it now must be asked what happens first: the end of this new contract or Line 5 (Eglinton Crosstown) finally opening?
NYLANDER IS A MAPLE LEAF. For about his entire career, this is a W plain and simple
Do I love the player? yes, is 11.5 too much? yes, is a full NTC extremely dumb? yes….
BUT GO LEAFS GO
I love that we have Willy back but this is a really bad contract that may truly cause issues both short and long term. 8 years takes willy well into the period where he will and should decline. 11.5 is an overpay of something like 2.5 million and puts us in a very difficult spot next year as well as doubling down on a cap structure that hasn’t worked well for us. The NMC means we’re all in on this cap structure effectively indefinitely.
I think this is worse than any contract Dubas signed during his tenure.
It’s a lot of money, way more than I would have been comfortable with before the season and while it might not be an overpay it certainly isn’t a deal.
But at the same time, Willy has been one of my favourite players during his time here and I like watching my favourite players play on my favourite team. As a fan, this contract makes me happy. It’s fun to watch good players, and players of this calibre tend to have the most repeatable performance. Between him, Rielly, and Auston all locked up for the foreseeable future, it’s a good time to be a fan.
Next year is when the cap crunch is going to be truly felt from this deal, since for 25-26 and onwards we should expect Tavares to come back at a substantially reduced rate. And even with Willy and Auston’s extensions, we should still be able to field a comparable, competitive roster.
The onus is on Treliving now. There’s plenty of money to fill out the roster and we have useful players on ELCs or low-cost deals. We should be able to re-sign Bertuzzi (or a Bertuzzi-type), find a Brodie replacement at a similar-ish cap hit. But what Brad can’t do is miss on another Klingberg deal, or really any deal in the 3-5mil range. Those have to be prudent, effective signings.
I truly can’t stand people whining about this deal. Willy is the exact guy they should be betting on to be a core member of this team for the future. He delivers.
He’s only spent the entirety of his career so far shutting up every hater along the way, so it’s par for the course.
There are other players/bigger issues if you wanna talk money, but they don’t get the same scrutiny.
But yeah, I’m not gonna be complaining about keeping on one of the most dynamic offensive players we’ve seen don a Buds jersey in recent franchise history.
As long as we keep paying Brandon Pridham to solve our cap problems, we’re good. I, for one, say thank you Willy for staying! I don’t envy future Brandon Pridham though.
LFG.. ordering the jersey now
This was a deal that needed to be done. Glad that’s out of the way and we can focus on the getting the cup.
Everyone thought he’d get $88m to match his jersey number, but he got $92m to match his dad’s
So the alternative reality is willy walks ..pizza boy freaks out and signs bert to a 5 x 5 mil contract …so let’s be happy we have two franchise corner stones locked up into their thirties
Only leaf forward out of the big 3 who signed for 8 years. Dude got paid the cheapest out of the big 4 despite playing just as well as them but we expect him to take the discount
I am so glad! He is my favourite leaf!
can’t wait to see a million people make fun of the leafs then the same million people complain about people talking about the leafs all the time
Anyone see the clip of him talking in the scrum – (paraphrasing) “without even thinking about it. Toronto is home.”
Bring it home Willy. Bring it home.
What are we paying a GM for? Nylander got an astronomical number. He got the term on an astronomical number. He go a full NMC. He got a ton up front in signing bonuses. He got everything he could ever dream of.
Is he worth it? I have no idea, that’s not my job. What I do know though is that I could have negotiated this deal, and I’m a fuckin idiot. “Hey Willy, what do you want? This? Ok sounds good.” See, we did it!
How do the Leafs so consistently get bent over in every negotiation? It’s not even statistically possible. What is it about this club that they just cave to every demand? I just don’t get it.
I dont care, I’m just glad we have Willy