With all of the focus on the big fish rentals, the Leafs should pursue a deal for Nick Schmaltz
With Bo Horvat falling off the board on Monday after a blockbuster deal between the New York Islanders and Vancouver Canucks, there is one less big fish rental available on the trade market. While the return on Horvat wasn't as high as some might have been expecting, there is a lot of chatter that the price may have come down on some of the remaining rentals. That's more wishful thinking than anything else, in my opinion.
When looking at some of the remaining big names, such as Patrick Kane, Ryan O'Reilly and Vladimir Tarasenko, among others, the price hasn't dropped. Horvat may be the most productive player on that list this season, but with one less option on the market, one could argue that due to supply and demand, the price may have actually gone up, even if only marginally. The teams who missed out on Horvat may now be scrambling to make a deal for the next best player. This could even cause the market to become more aggressive in the pending RFA market for a player like Timo Meier as well. When the next name comes off the board, we could see the prices increase on the remaining rentals yet again, which could spell trouble for a team like the Leafs, who may not want to pay the lofty asking prices on a rental and could risk missing out on an impactful top six addition at the deadline.
There is, however, a handful of underrated top-six and middle-six forwards that the Leafs may be able to pursue who are not rentals and who have term remaining on their current deals. On Tuesday, The Athletic's Kevin Papetti brought up the name of one of them - and while he didn't necessarily link them to the Leafs, there's no denying that the move could make a lot of sense for Kyle Dubas and company.
Nick Schmaltz is certainly an under-the-radar player. Tucked away in the NHL's smallest market in Arizona, it's easy to overlook the type of impact he could have on any team's top-6. Schmaltz has the ability to play both wing and center, though he has played primarily on the wing of late. He's a right shot and plays on the Coyotes' top line on the right wing, but could easily shift over to the left and form a pretty dynamic trio with John Tavares and William Nylander.
Having scored 7 points in his last 5 games, including a 4-point night on January 26th against St. Louis, Schmaltz is up to 11 goals and 28 points in 34 games with the Yotes this season. He also had a very strong campaign last season, amassing 59 points in 63 games, scoring 23 goals along the way. The only problem is that Schmaltz has not played a full 82-game season in his 8-year NHL career. The 26-year-old is also a pretty solid 5v5 point producer, with just 8 of his points last season coming on the man advantage. So far this season, only 6 of his 28 points have come on the power play.
Schmaltz is signed through 2025-26 at a very reasonable $5.85M cap hit, but is owed an average of approximately $8.15M per season in each of the final few years of his deal. As Papetti points out, a team like the Coyotes are not typically concerned with a player's cap hit, but rather their actual salary. Since Schmaltz' actual salary is above his cap hit for the next 3 years, it would make sense that the Yotes could be interested in moving him out to save on spending - especially since they're currently playing in front of 5,000 fans per night at a college rink as they await their new NHL-sized arena in Tempe, AZ (if everything goes according to plan).
Obviously, if the Leafs are interested, they'll require Arizona to retain some salary. There's also the very real possibility of bringing in an additional team to retain some additional salary. If the Buds really wanted to pay the price to bring in Schmaltz, they could have him for as low as $1.46M ($2.925M retained by Arizona and 50% of his remaining salary retained by a third party broker). The Leafs could afford that without subtracting anyone from the NHL roster, though they'd have to assign at least one player to the Marlies (potentially Joey Anderson) and carry a 22-man roster until the playoffs begin. If that were to occur, the roster would look something like this at full health:
Bunting-Matthews-Nylander
Schmaltz-Tavares-Marner
Jarnkrok-Kampf-Engvall
AstonReese-Holmberg-Kerfoot
Extra: Simmonds
Rielly-Brodie
Giordano-Holl
Sandin-Liljegren
Extra: Timmins, Benn
Murray/Samsonov
Schmaltz may not be the sexiest name out there, but the cascading effect that his addition would have on the roster and the fact that the Leafs could get him for purely futures with salary retention could make a ton of sense and would very arguably make the Leafs a better team from top to bottom.
This deal would allow the Leafs to keep all of their top prospects (Knies, Minten, Niemela) and while they may have to part with their 1st round pick and a "B" prospect, simply for the amount that Arizona may have to retain to make the deal work from a cap perspective, at least the Leafs wouldn't be parting with that pick for a pure rental. Three and a half seasons of Schmaltz at less than $1.5M could be a game-changer for the Leafs and make them a much deeper team than they already are - and just because a player plays in a small market and doesn't get a lot of attention doesn't necessarily mean he's not a good player. In Schmaltz' case, he produces like a star winger at only slightly less than a point-per-game and he does it at 5v5, which is very important. A player like this can absolutely help this team.
| POLL | ||
JANVIER 31 | 169 ANSWERS With all of the focus on the big fish rentals, the Leafs should pursue a deal for Nick Schmaltz Should the Leafs go after a double-retained Nick Schmaltz? | ||
| Yes | 91 | 53.8 % |
| No | 47 | 27.8 % |
| They need someone better | 31 | 18.3 % |
| List of polls | ||
