The Toronto Maple Leafs and Anthony Stolarz took care of some leftover business from the summer, agreeing on a four-year, $15 million contract extension. The deal will start at the beginning of the 2026-27 season, when Stolarz is 32, and according to ESPN’s Kevin Weekes is a heavily bonus-laden deal.
According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman on Monday’s 32 Thoughts podcast, the deal between the Leafs and the veteran netminder was to be $15 million in total money; the dragged-out negotiations were how the two sides would get there. Leafs GM Brad Treliving was concerned about the term and the AAV of the deal, especially for a player with Stolarz’s checkered injury history, and according to Friedman, sacrificed an extra year on the contract to keep the AAV below $4 million and nearly exact to Joseph Woll’s $3.66 million AAV.
The deal has its risks, because it is nearly certain that Stolarz will at best be a tandem goalie with Woll the next few years, but the Leafs are not playing him at the level of the league’s top starters like Igor Shesterkin, Sergei Bobrovsky, or Andrei Vasilevskiy. In fact, starting next season, the combined AAV of Stolarz and Woll ($7..417 million) is less than the top 10 individual goalie salaries (including the retired Carey Price) in the NHL.
What is undoubtedly a fact, entering his third season as Leafs GM, is that Treliving has been able to do what both Lou Lamoriello and Kyle Dubas were unable to accomplish: get excellent deals for the Leafs for players they wanted to keep. After coming in and making a few puzzling signings (the Ryan Reaves three-year deal was an abomination, and the David Kampf extension was not much better), there has not been a deal that the Leafs GM has been outmaneuvered.
For a franchise player like Auston Matthews, any team pretty much has to give him what he wants for as long as he wants. Treliving was able to get William Nylander on an eight-year deal, and Matthew Knies for six years. The extensions of Woll, Jake McCabe, John Tavares, Max Domi, Bobby McMann, Simon Benoit, Steven Lorentz, and the signings of Chris Tanev, Oliver Ekman-Larsson all used tactics like giving an extra year to spread out the AAV or using deferred money to lower the cap hit.
And in the case of Mitch Marner, it is my opinion that the Leafs knew that he did not want to sign back with Toronto, and as far back as last summer, tried to trade him.
The only bit of unfinished business appears to be Scott Laughton, who is entering the final year of his contract. After struggling at the end of last season and the playoffs, the Oakville, ON native has had a good camp and seems more settled with his new team. There is no great rush in signing Laughton, and it is likely that Treliving is waiting to see how this season goes before making overtures on a new deal.
