Cap Friendly: Salary Cap hits for William Nylander’s new contract.
2018-19 – $10,277,778
2019-24 – $6,962,366
Pierre LeBrun: “Any way you look at it, while it’s a crummy experience sitting out two months, when you consider the Leafs were at 6 x 6 at the start of the season and desperately didn’t want to go above 6.5 for the longest time, the ordeal was well worth it financially for Nylander”
Bruce Arthur: (just before the signing) “William Nylander might be crazy, and might be wrong, but I’ll say this: Not a lot of hockey players have the guts to take a contract dispute all the way to the deadline. Nobody’s ever done this exact thing before, and it takes some nerves.”
With William Nylander’s AAV set at $6,962,366 for the outer years, and based on the current list of players on the clubs active roster, we now show the #Leafs with $56,275,699 in total cap hit dollars committed to 12 players (7F/4D/1G)https://t.co/BPt2vFET34 pic.twitter.com/Ykl9E20XDc
— CapFriendly (@CapFriendly) December 2, 2018
TSN: Toronto Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas after the William Nylander contract was finalized yesterday.
“Any time you get into something like this, especially when you come into the last day, you think it might be reality,” Dubas said of the possibility Nylander wouldn’t sign. “It’s my duty to the organization and our group to ensure we’re putting the organization in the best possible spot moving forward with all our economics and all of our players, so we have to do what’s right for that.”
Dubas wouldn’t comment on how the negotiations were or how many offers were submitted by each side.
Nylander called the Dubas 30 minutes before the deadline and asked if they wanted to get the deal done. After a brief conversation, Dubas and Gross then talked and hammered out the deal.
Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner are eligible for contract extensions and Dubas has kept the lines of communication open with both sides.
“Not in the way we’d like to,” he said. “I think we’ve shown that when it comes to making sure everything fit our economics, we’ll go to whatever length we have to. But our goal is to have everyone settled as soon as we possibly can and that allows us to best plan for the remainder of the year and roll from there.”
Terry Koshan of the Toronto Sun: William Nylander is expected to making his way to Toronto today. It’s not known yet when he’ll meet up with the team and when he’ll get into the lineup. Nylander:
“It has been a crazy ride. I wish it would have been done earlier, but I’m very happy to be back with the best fans in the league. I’m very excited.”
Nylander didn’t want a bridge deal and didn’t want to leave.
“That was something I wanted,” Nylander said. “I didn’t want a bridge deal. I want to stay in Toronto with all the players that we have and we have a great team.
“I didn’t want to risk it by signing a bridge deal and not being able to stay, if that was going to happen.”