“I believe there is an agreement in place for Jake Muzzin to extend with the Toronto Maple Leafs.”

So says Darren Dreger on TSN’s Insider Trading. He’s not saying he thinks it might happen, he’s saying it’s done in all but the filing with the NHL stage.

The details are: Four years at just over $5.5 million in AAV. It’s front loaded and contains trade protection. Dreger does not mention this, but we should likely expect a lot of signing bonuses included in that “front loading”.

Because of the cap and tagging issues, don’t expect this deal to be announced until March 1 when tagging space increases.

Tag, you’re it: Jake Muzzin might be the next Maple Leafs player to get an extension

With this deal in place, and for argument’s sake, let’s call it $5.6 million, the Leafs will have $77.9 million in cap space allocated to 10 forwards currently on the roster, as well as six defenders and two goaltenders. That number (from Cap Friendly and my calculator) also includes the retained salary for Phil Kessel.

Assuming the salary cap will rise over the current year’s $81.5 million, there is some space available to flesh out that roster, but not room to add another defencemen with a high cap hit unless someone reasonably expensive comes off.

Free Agents and Contracts