Toronto Maple Leafs – Morgan Rielly
Contract: $5 million cap hit over the next three seasons
The Toronto Maple Leafs have a number of great contracts. But Morgan Rielly stands out. He’s a legit top pairing defenseman with a $5 million cap hit. That’s a huge steal. Rielly had his best overall season as a pro. According to Evolving Hockey, he had the fourth-highest WAR among defensemen at 3.2.
During the 2018-19 season, he set career highs in several categories. Rielly’s 20 goals, 52 assists, and 72 points were each career highs. To put that in perspective, his previous career high in points was 52.
Rielly is very good at staying out of the penalty box. He only had 14 penalty minutes in over 1,800 minutes during the regular season. Among defensemen with at least 1,000 minutes during all situations, his 0.22 penalties per hour was the ninth-lowest. Rielly doesn’t draw that many penalties, but I’ll let that slide since defensemen rarely do that anyway.
Honorable mentions: Matthews is getting paid over $11 million a year for the next five years. He has trouble staying healthy, but he is indisputably one of the best goal scorers of the salary cap era. I was surprised Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson both got the deals that they got. At $11 million, John Tavares is still a darn good bargain.
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