Auston Matthews holds all of the power in contract talks with the Maple Leafs (2024)

Johnny Gaudreau said he loved Calgary, loved being a Flame, and would “love” to sign an extension.

It was the spring of 2021.

Gaudreau still had one year left on his contract. “I don’t think I’ve ever once said I haven’t wanted to be here,” Gaudreau said at the time.

He was coming off an underwhelming season of 49 points in 56 games. The Flames were still intent on signing their superstar winger, who was one year away from unrestricted free agency. At the risk of eventually losing Gaudreau for nothing, the Flames and their GM at the time, Brad Treliving, could have traded him. They didn’t. Nor could they come to terms on a new deal during a season that saw Gaudreau drop a monster 115 points.

“I don’t know what else to say other than we’re gonna do everything we possibly can to get him signed,” Treliving said after that season, when Gaudreau was on the verge of hitting the open market. “So we’re hopeful we can get it done.”

They didn’t get it done. Gaudreau left Calgary that summer to sign a seven-year, $68 million contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets.

One year later, Treliving, now the Maple Leafs GM, is facing a situation with Auston Matthews that isn’t totally dissimilar from the one he once faced with Gaudreau.

Brendan Shanahan’s big gamble: That Brad Treliving can take the Leafs where Kyle Dubas could not: https://t.co/PGMqjouNzu

— Jonas Siegel (@jonassiegel) June 1, 2023

Matthews can sign an extension with the Leafs on July 1. That same day, the no-movement clause in his current contract also kicks in. In other words, by Canada Day, Matthews will hold full control over his future — and all the leverage in contract talks.

It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison between Gaudreau and Matthews, even if Matthews is coming off a “down” year of 40 goals and 85 points in 74 games followed by five goals and 11 points in 11 playoff games. Matthews is in a different stratosphere as a player than Gaudreau is or ever was.

At his best, Matthews is a top-three player in the world — top-one even the season before last.

Which makes this negotiation even thornier for Treliving.

How do you even negotiate with someone who holds all the power?

If this were the NBA, the Leafs would simply extend the biggest contract possible to Matthews. But this isn’t the NBA. It’s the NHL with a hard cap — and a player who is arguably more important to this franchise than any who came before him.

The Leafs really are at Matthews’ mercy. All they can do is urge him to stay for longer and for less.

They, of course, struggled to do that last time around (with Dubas as GM) when Matthews signed only a five-year contract with what was then the second-highest cap hit in the league ($11.64 million cap hit). The threat of an offer sheet loomed then. Now, it’s the threat of Matthews just leaving next summer.

It’s even more leverage, in other words, for Matthews.

Do the Leafs have any choice but to cede to his demands? What’s even reasonable?

Nathan MacKinnon will hold the highest cap hit in the league when his new contract begins next season. That $12.6 million cap hit was worth just over 15 percent of the cap at the time it was signed last fall. Connor McDavid, the former holder of the top spot, nabbed almost 17 percent of the cap when he signed his second NHL deal back in 2017.

It’s almost certain that Matthews’ ends up somewhere in that range.

His last deal came with a cap hit that was worth 14.64 percent of the cap at the time it was signed in Feb. 2019.

So the Leafs are probably looking at a deal with a cap hit in the range of 15 to 17 percent of the cap, vaulting him beyond MacKinnon and McDavid.

How big might that number be?

While the cap is expected to rise to $83.5 million in the coming season, it’s expected to jump a lot more after that — to perhaps $87 to 88 million. (It’s tough luck for the Leafs that after years of a punishing flat-cap world, the cap will rise by a lot when Matthews as well as William Nylander, and soon, Mitch Marner, are due their next deals.)

For our purposes, let’s ballpark it at $87.5 million.

Fifteen percent of that, a la MacKinnon, equals about $13.1 million. A figure on McDavid’s level (16.67 percent) lands at almost $14.6 million.

It’s crucial to note that MacKinnon and McDavid both signed for the full eight years.

Will Matthews sign up for that? It seems unlikely. Matthews showed already that he would forge his own path when he signed that five-year deal, which offered the promise of more future dollars and flexibility but which also stood in stark contrast to the longer deals signed by those like McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, among others. He said then that everything between three and eight years was discussed.

Something on the shorter end felt likely even before the Leafs changed GMs. Now? With all the uncertainty over the direction of the franchise, you wonder if Matthews leans even shorter than five years — three or four years, say.

At which point, the question becomes: How much of a haircut, if any, will he take on that cap figure?

Related question: How much responsibility, if any, does a player in Matthews’ position have to take less? The unpopular answer is probably none. However, taking less now would a) help the Leafs build a better team, theoretically anyway, b) endear him to a wounded fan base and c) have the ripple effect of limiting Marner’s eventual ask next summer (assuming he isn’t dealt before then).

The cap hit on Matthews’ next deal is sure to exceed his current figure and will almost certainly top MacKinnon’s $12.6 million number regardless of term.

You have to figure that Matthews’ agent Judd Moldaver has a cap number in mind for every possible term his client would consider.

So, a three-year deal with a $12.7 million cap hit perhaps? Four years at $14 million per?

Can Treliving somehow convince Matthews to commit for longer, even if the cap figure rises substantially in the process?

How hard can the new Leafs GM even push? The longer this drags out the more nerve-wracking it will become for all involved. A loud bounce-back season for Matthews will only increase his already one-sided leverage. Will Matthews even negotiate in-season like he did last time? And if not, what kind of tension will that bring to the season?

Matthews said his “intention is to be here” after last season came to an end. That was before the Leafs replaced Kyle Dubas with Treliving, so the environment has changed, if only slightly. We do know Treliving has made the establishment of a relationship with Matthews his top priority after taking the Leafs’ GM job.

“It’s me getting a chance to meet him,” Treliving said last week. “But more importantly, having Auston get a chance to meet me and know what we’re about, and just talk a little bit.”

It would, presumably, be Treliving selling his vision of the Leafs’ future to Matthews in a way that convinces Matthews to commit ASAP.

If Treliving senses any reluctance from Matthews about his commitment to Toronto for whatever reason, what then? He could, theoretically, shop him before that no-movement clause kicks in — less than four weeks away now. That prospect has always seemed crazy to me, dealing the most talented player in franchise history. If even one phone call to an opposing GM leaked out, that might be it. Matthews could slow-play things until July 1, lock in control over his future, play the year out, and leave next summer.

The Leafs can’t risk any of that. They won’t want to do anything that would dissuade Matthews from signing with them, even if it’s not until — gulp — next summer. (If, for whatever reason, Matthews suggested in private that he wasn’t willing to stay, then obviously the Leafs would have to initiate trade talks. But there’s been no hint of that.)

That’s obviously what the Flames were thinking with Gaudreau.

Their hope, until the end, was to sign him. Which is why, even if it’s fair to criticize Treliving and the Flames for letting Gaudreau leave for nothing, it’s important to acknowledge how difficult of a position they were in.

Were they supposed to deal him at the first hint of trouble when Gaudreau first became extension-eligible, if there was even a hint of trouble? Or, were they supposed to keep trudging along in negotiations with Gaudreau’s agent, Lewis Gross, until they hopefully landed on a deal?

They understandably chose the latter.

If there was a mistake in retrospect, it seems it was a mistake in assessing leverage. The Flames had to make an early offer that would be enticing enough for him to spurn the free market. Evidently, they failed to do that.

Treliving can’t afford for this to become Gaudreau 2.0.

It’s a tough spot for him to be in, but not a bad one either.

He and the Leafs have an opportunity to keep their most important player around for the long haul — how long and for how much exactly is to be determined.

Stats and research courtesy of CapFriendly and Hockey Reference

(Top photo of Auston Matthews: Kevin Sousa / NHLI via Getty Images)