With the Maple Leafs signing T.J. Brodie to a $5 million AAV deal, they now officially have a cap crunch again.

The following shows the off-season cap space, which has a lot of room for this signing, and a projected 23-man roster:

Maple Leafs Cap Space, October 10

NameCap Hit (or Qualifying Offer)Days in NHL If 2-wayProrated Cap HitProjected Roster
One-Way Contracts
Auston Matthews11,634,00011,634,00011,634,000
John Tavares11,000,00011,000,00011,000,000
Mitch Marner10,893,00010,893,00010,893,000
William Nylander6,932,3666,932,3666,932,366
Alex Kerfoot3,500,0003,500,0003,500,000
Andreas Johnsson3,400,0003,400,0003,400,000
Zach Hyman2,250,0002,250,0002,250,000
Wayne Simmonds1,500,0001,500,0001,500,000
Pierre Engvall1,250,0001,250,0001,250,000
Nic Petan775,000775,000
Jason Spezza700,000700,000700,000
Kalle Kossila700,000700,000
Denis Malgin700,000700,000700,000
Morgan Rielly5,000,0005,000,0005,000,000
Jake Muzzin5,625,0005,625,0005,625,000
T.J. Brodie5,000,0005,000,0005,000,000
Justin Holl2,000,0002,000,0002,000,000
Martin Marincin700,000700,000
Calle Rosen750,000750,000
Frederik Andersen5,000,0005,000,0005,000,000
Jack Campbell1,650,0001,650,0001,650,000
Two-Way Contracts
Egor Korshkov925,000524,866925,000
Nick Robertson850,00000
Semyon Der-Arguchintsev783,33300
Filip Hallander778,33300
Adam Brooks725,0002597,446
Alexander Brabanov925,00000925,000
Mikhail Abramov810,00000
Rasmus Sandin894,13796461,490894,137
Timothy Liljegren863,33337171,738
Joe Duszak800,00000
Mac Hollowell799,76600
Teemu Kivihalme725,000519,758
Mikko Lehtonen925,00000925,000
Kristians Rubins785,00000
Filip Kral810,00000
Ian Scott805,83300
Joseph Woll800,00000
Qualifying Offers
Ilya Mikheyev874,125186874,125874,125
Travis Dermott - one way874,125874,125874,125
Retained1,200,0001,200,0001,200,000
Total:97,912,35184,682,91484,651,753
Salary Cap81,500,00081,500,000
10% overage8,150,000
Total:89,650,00081,500,000
Cap Space4,967,086-3,151,753

Chances are, the Leafs won’t run a 23 man roster, but the sorts of players you lop off to run short make $925,000 at most. So you can only clear up about 2⁄3 of the overage by running with 21 players.

Making this worse is that, right now, Travis Dermott and Ilya Mikheyev remain unsigned, so they are listed only at their Qualifying Offer amounts. It seems inevitable that a spare $3 million has to be removed from this roster just to stand pat. To add any new, snarly or gritty or defensively capable depth forwards or defenders, they would either need to be paid less than the players they replace, or someone else again would need to be traded.

This is a much easier problem to solve than figuring out how to pay Alex Pietrangelo, which is likely now Vegas’s problem, but it’s still a bit of a pickle.

The Leafs have until the last day of training camp — whenever that is — to figure it out.

Cap Space Shuffle