Maple Leafs young core may need sacrifice money for the team to remain intact
Kristen Shilton: The Toronto Maple Leafs still need to sign William Nylander for this season and have Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner to deal with for next year. Maple Leafs president Brendan Shannan said that his young core is going to have make a bit of financial sacrifice in order to keep the young core together.
“With the challenges of today, you have to figure out what’s most important to you,” Shanahan told reporters Wednesday. “At the end of the day, we see a great example in . could have made more money elsewhere, but it wasn’t his job to set a new bar or to please other people with other interests. He wanted to come here and win hockey games and be treated fairly, and he is. And that’s what we hope for and expect from our players as we go forward.”
Nylander is training back in Sweden as he awaits a new deal and is still in the Maple Leafs plans at the right price. The Leafs can’t overspend on Nylander given their future cap situation.
Kristen Shilton: Auston Matthews was asked about Shanahan’s comments about young players making a financial sacrifice to remain with the Maple Leafs: “That’s why we have agents, right? Let them figure it out, talk to management. We’ll stay out of it and just play hockey.”
Jonas Siegel of The Athletic: Shanahan adds that taking less money isn’t for everyone.
“It’s not for everyone,” Shanahan said of the pitch the team was making to its core of young players. “But for the ones that will play here that is what they want or that’s what we want from them and I think that’s what they want from each other. And at the end of the day I think that’s what you look back on and remember the most is how they interact with their teammates and whether they were able to be a part of something like this.”
The Leafs may be looking to get Nylander signed to a long-term deal at a little less than $7 million.
Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas said last week in an interview that he spoke with their young core before free agency got underway on July 1st and they all agreed that adding John Tavares would be good for the team.
“And they were all unanimously on side with wanting us to push and add him,” Dubas said. “Because as John has said a number of times, ‘I didn’t want to come to a team and have them have to subtract two or three guys. Kind of defeats the purpose.’ So that was our entire ambition before we approached John was to make sure that everyone internally was on-side and then we rolled from there.”
The Maple Leafs have held some talks with Matthews and Marner’s reps. Matthews could be looking at Connor McDavid money and Marner at Leon Draisaitl money and more.
Shanahan on Nylander talks.
“It just takes time. It does take some time. There will be no panic involved on our end. And I feel like there will be no panic involved on their end. And sometimes it just takes a little bit more time than usual to get to where we need to be. I’m still confident that with Kyle we’re going to get there.”