Matt Knies is on an expiring ELC right now, and he is absolutely going to be extended. There's a lot of decisions to be made by both sides before a deal gets done, though.
Now or at expiry?
Knies will be 22 this month, meaning he'll be 23 when his ELC runs out. He's played one full year in the NHL after his debut the year prior in the playoffs, so right now he has a limited body of work to base a new deal on. If he wants the maximum number of dollars he should be thinking that waiting is the right move, assuming he has a better year than last year. Particularly since the early plan is to play him with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner.
He won't have arbitration rights when his ELC expires, but a lot of splash over points and a season playing the Tyler Bertuzzi role very well will solidify his claim on an AAV around $5 million.
The Leafs, meanwhile should be pushing to sign him now at a lower amount based on what he's done so far. He's not going to be paid like Bobby McMann, but $2 to $2.5 million depending on AAV is what a shorter deal should look like.
I looked at Evolving Hockey's full set of model predictions for a Knies extension and I think their numbers look as accurate as they usually are. A general range of $2 to $5 million is where this contract should fall. That's a big range, and it's big because the difference between a bridge deal and term for a player so young is meaningful.
Bridge or Marriage
There's two schools of thought on signing a player coming off an ELC who is already in the NHL: bridge deal to manage the short term cap space or term to lock the player up for an amount that will look cap-friendly in the future and tie the fortunes of the team and the player together until a trade does them part.
Lets ignore Auston Matthews third option of middle-length contracts so he can keep his AAV percolating up at the top of the NHL leader board – he's a special case. This is more like William Nylander, the classic player who wants to marry the team, settle down, buy some real estate and have a family. Okay, so far it's two dogs and a brother, but it's nearly the same thing.
A bridge deal, for all it seems to offend players, is often a good path to maximizing earnings, and it might be something Knies wants to do. It makes him a team player now on the AAV, and he'd have a very good case in a couple of years for a substantial AAV on a term deal. Of course in two or three years, that AAV might be substantially bigger than the current predicted $5 million upper end, as a rising cap and better on-ice play pushes it up.
The assumption is that players do just want to maximize their earnings, but that really doesn't bear up under scrutiny. Middle-ranked players can and do decide to get long-term stability and certainty ahead of total dollars. Calle Järnkrok is the extreme example, where he signed a six-year, $2 million deal in 2016 with the Predators at age 28. He'd only entered the NHL four years prior, and signed a one-year deal with Nashville when he came off that ELC. When he could get commitment, he went for it. Pierre Engvall signed that amazing seven-year, $3 million deal, which is going to look pretty good in a couple of years, even if it is paying him for a role he wouldn't have on a better team.
The last few years of flat salary caps saw a lot of younger players pressured into bridge deals, sometimes really good ones. Elias Pettersson is negotiating with the Canucks again because they would only go for a three-year deal the last time to keep the AAV low. Ask Brad Treliving how that Covid-era bridge deal he got Matthew Tkachuk to sign worked out.
Matthew Knies is not Tkachuk, but he is a player who the Leafs like to use on their top line. Which complicates this question from both sides. At 22, Knies is at about the worst age to really know what his age 25-30 seasons are really going to look like. Better than now, almost certainly, but how much? You shouldn't expect massive growth, but you shouldn't expect none either.
A two- or three-year bridge deal would at around $2 million or a little over is a bargain for the Leafs now that they'd have to pay for on his next deal if his performance improves a lot. A term deal – let's go hard on security and imagine eight years – would be somewhere in the $5 million range on an AAV. Is he a $5 million player now? Not based on his impacts on offence last year, he's not. Right now he's the type of player the Leafs want to play with Matthews and Marner, and to go out and get someone to do that at a higher level than Knies managed last season will cost exactly that number.
However, a good season as their winger can get you Michael Bunting's deal. The Hurricanes signed Bunting for three years at $4.5 million in 2023. And then they realized that was a mistake and they upgraded him to Jake Guentzal.
This is a good cautionary tale for both sides. A hot year this season can make Knies want more then he'll ever be worth, and he'd be able to get it elsewhere. But the secret Calle Järnkrok knows, and Michael Bunting is only learning, is that an overpay fills the bank account, but you end up playing on a team that only might make the playoffs. Or worse.
The Leafs should want to sign Knies right now, and Knies might want the security of a permanent career standing next to Auston Matthews, with visions of a shared cup week in Phoenix dancing in his head. You can imagine how Knies and the Leafs might come to the same conclusion on how to answer these questions right now from different directions.
The tricky question for the Leafs is: will he be worth that $5 million sooner or only later after a lot of cap increases have devalued the amount? For it to be a good deal for the Leafs to go term, he has to soar up in actual value soon. It's easy to see why the bridge deal is beloved by GMs. It's safe. The risk of a term deal for a still not fully formed player is that if you guess wrong, that mistake is staring you in the face every day. Everyone delights in calling you stupid, and are sure you should have known better, and that everyone might include the guy who hired you.
But every GM knows that a bridge deal for a young player that expires with him still an RFA looks clever right up until you're negotiating again all too soon in a cap world where the inflation has already happened, and the AAVs of similar players have already risen and you've already spent this extra space on someone else.
I know what I think. He's 22, he's a proven NHLer, he's big and feisty and fills the role they will have open for some time. If he'll go for eight years, do it! The gamble is that two contracts over the same period will ultimately cost more than that term deal will. In the very unlikely circumstance that he doesn't turn into the player they think he is, it's not that hard to get out from under an overpay in this range.
I think Knies wants a marriage, just like Nylander did. And everyone will cluck their tongues at the AAV because the zeitgeist demands a coach that plays extremely high-risk hockey and a GM who makes ultra-safe contract decisions.
