Mirtle: Why the Maple Leafs really won the Jake McCabe trade. And what comes next

SEATTLE — There are a lot of interesting facets to what the Maple Leafs have done prior to this trade deadline, from the four players they acquired to the six draft picks they’ve given up.

It’s obviously a very aggressive play, more so than we’ve likely seen in franchise history. And it fills three key needs: 1. Another quality top-six forward (Ryan O’Reilly), 2. Another top-four defenseman (Jake McCabe) and 3. Improved forward depth (Noel Acciari and Sam Lafferty).

Doing all that in one deadline isn’t easy. Or cheap. And there are likely going to be challenges integrating and acclimatizing so many new players in a really short time frame.

What stands out to me as even more unique than the number of players coming in and picks going out, however, is what the Leafs managed to do on the retention side of things.

Not only did they get a rare double retention on O’Reilly, dropping his cap hit from $7.5 million down to $1.875 million (which cost them two draft picks on its own), they also were able to get McCabe for just $2 million.

Until 2025.

Most of the time when you see a retained salary transaction in the NHL, it’s with a rental player, so the amount of cap and cash involved for the retaining team is very minimal and temporary. Occasionally, like when the Leafs traded away Phil Kessel, there’s a small amount of retention for a long period of time (in his case, it was 15 percent for seven years of an eight-year deal).

Neither of those scenarios apply to McCabe. He’s a 29-year-old top-four defenseman who, by the numbers, has a market value of nearly $5 million a season.

And he will now be making $2 million a season against the cap for a contender for the next three postseasons.

That’s pretty unusual. And valuable.

We sort of know the going rate for retained salary deals at this point. The Leafs, for example, had to give up a first-round pick to punt the final year of Patrick Marleau’s deal and that was $6.5 million against the cap and $4.8 million in actual money.

McCabe’s deal equates to roughly $4.5 million against the cap and $5 million in cash, spread over 2.25 years. But instead of the Leafs having to give up a first-round pick simply for all that acquired cap space, they also get a pretty useful player in the deal.

Now, we’ll see what kind of an impact he makes. The tough thing with evaluating McCabe is he’s almost exclusively played on crappy teams in his career, but smart execs around the league who I’ve surveyed really like what he brings to the table. And he gives Toronto some different elements, stylistically, than what they have on their back end.

He might really surprise on a good team with a good partner, either supporting an offensive defenseman like Morgan Rielly or tandeming with someone like T.J. Brodie to handle tough assignments.

The real coup for the Leafs, however, is adding a top-four blueliner for bottom-pair money for the rest of this season and two more. You can see the impact that potentially has on their cap sheet as soon as this summer where, with Mark Giordano, Timothy Liljegren, Rasmus Sandin and Conor Timmins making a combined $4.7 million, their defense core is very solid and also dirt cheap.

That will allow them to spend more up front, even beyond simply trying to retain the likes of O’Reilly and Michael Bunting, who I’ve re-signed here for illustrative purposes.

I took some artistic liberties with the lineup above, but the blue line is relatively set, with only Justin Holl contract-less this offseason.

In this scenario, if Matt Murray is moved, the Leafs have an additional $7 million to fill out the forward group above. (With Murray in the fold, it’s more like $3 million, and some bargain hunting will have to occur.)

The point is that having yet another top-four option on the back end for a low cap hit is a luxury worth giving up assets for.

What’s the full cost-benefit analysis of having a ~$5 million defenseman for 40 percent of that cap hit for 2.25 seasons? I don’t think we’ve necessarily established that baseline in the NHL at this point, but it’s certainly valuable.

Contract efficiency is, in general, still undervalued in the league, which is why teams like the Lightning get quizzical looks when they make moves like bringing in Brandon Hagel — he of a $1.5 million cap hit for three years — despite the fact he then puts up a 30-goal season.

We can see a new paradigm shaping up here in trade season. The smarter teams in the league are going to continue to find ways to get good players on discounted contracts like this, even if it involves using broker teams or leveraging picks to make it happen. That was a huge factor in this deal for the Leafs, as it helps them continue to navigate a challenging cap situation and still remain a contender.

I think we’re going to see more trades like this in the future. And perhaps the terms here help set the bar for what teams can expect to give up (and get) when there’s longer-term retention at play.

You can even come up with more extreme scenarios that could play out in the years to come. Imagine if the Leafs had found a way to do a double retention deal with McCabe, bringing his cap hit down to just $1 million over the course of the deal? Or if the Lightning had done something similar with Hagel, dropping his cap hit to just $375,000, half of a league-minimum deal?

What if you acquire a player on an entry-level contract (i.e. $950,000 or less cap hit) and pay to get retention on that deal?

There are more possibilities here that have yet to be mined. And seller teams like the Blackhawks are only just beginning to find ways to leverage those scenarios into fuller futures packages.

This McCabe deal is just the start of where it could go.

The other interesting piece of this latest trade is the fact that the Leafs are effectively spending money they don’t have. Entering the week, GM Kyle Dubas had only $2 million in cap space to work with, assuming Murray was about to come off of LTIR. But he took on $3.15 million between McCabe and Sam Lafferty, the checking center included in the deal.

So now he needs to cut costs — quickly. The Leafs really have three options now to get cap compliant before Friday’s deadline, and they all have various pros and cons.

I’d rank their paths like so:

1. Trade a player for an asset. 

One thing working in the Leafs’ favour is the quality of forwards left on the open market has dramatically thinned out. With O’Reilly, Vladimir Tarasenko, Bo Horvat, Timo Meier, Tanner Jeannot, Ivan Barbashev, Nino Niederreiter and Garnet Hathaway all having been moved already, suddenly the likes of Alex Kerfoot or Pierre Engvall likely have value on the open market for a team looking to fill out their depth positions.

The Leafs need to clear at least $1.1 million; if they intend on adding Matthew Knies on an entry-level contract at some point, they’ll need even more space than that.

I don’t see them moving a defenseman, given they’re going to want at least seven NHL options above Timmins, so it appears they’ll be shipping out a forward to get compliant. Perhaps they can even recoup a bit of draft capital — likely a mid- or late-round pick — and solve their cap issue that way.

With someone like Kerfoot, who makes $3.5 million, the Leafs could even retain half his contract and still create enough space.

Consider this the most likely route.

2. Waive a player (or two) and hope. 

NHL teams can bury up to $1.125 million of a contract in the minors. That is enough to get the Leafs cap compliant once Murray is healthy, so anyone they can clear through waivers and send down who makes that much or more will accomplish that.

There’s no salary cap in the playoffs, so in this scenario, any demotion would be temporary.

The tricky part here is would any forwards the Leafs placed on waivers clear through the league? The Penguins went this route with Kasperi Kapanen last week and, surprisingly, found a taker for the full $3.2 million freight on his contract, which has another year beyond this one to go.

The worst-case scenario, however, is really not that bad: You lose the player and the cap hit. The best case is you get under the cap, keep the player in the minors, and have the ability to recall and play them when you run into injuries or once you get to the postseason.

It’s really not a bad option, other than risking some of your depth.

3. Trade a player with an asset. 

The last resort for the Leafs would be to attach a pick or prospect to a player in order to move them and get cap compliant.

This feels unnecessary, given the option to use waivers to shed salary, but it’s happened in the past when teams have wanted to clear a full contract and not just the buriable amount.

Consider this unlikely in the Leafs case, given they should have other, better options.

However the above plays out, the Leafs are likely to be very tight to the cap for the rest of the regular season, which could get interesting if they run into short-term injuries. It’s not out of the question, for example, that they might have to play a game short one player in order to use the emergency exception rule.

Given they came into the deadline period with only around $5 million in cap space, however, and they still managed to add a top-six forward, a top-four defenseman and two bottom-six forwards, that’s a limitation you’re willing to work around.

Make no mistake, the Leafs’ ability to pull off some cap gymnastics is a key part of what’s unfolded over the past 11 days. If they have success in the postseason, their ability to make a lot happen with a small window, financially speaking, will be part of the reason why.

And unlike most deadline deals, what they’ve done this week could potentially help them in the years to come, too.

(Top photo of Jake McCabe: Michael Reaves / Getty Images)