Insiders reveal the Maple Leafs goalie targets as a Jack Campbell replacement
Today, Jonas Siegel of the Athletic wrote a deep analysis of the Leafs' targets at the goaltending position this off-season.
With their starting goalie Jack Campbell as a UFA commanding a dollar amount the Leafs seem unwilling to pay, and the team's apparent desire to move the severely underwhelming backup option in Petr Mrazek, the Leafs' goaltending is likely to be completely overhauled for next season, potentially featuring two entirely new goalies.
With limited cap space to allocate to the position, finding adequate goalies to carry them to their ultimate goal of a Stanley Cup will be extremely difficult, if not prove to be impossible. Taking into account the caliber of goalie needed and the dollar amount they will command, Siegel highlighted 16 options for the Leafs at the starting and backup position.
For starting goalies, the Leafs could target John Gibson, Ville Husso, Darcy Kuemper, Semyon Varlamov, or aim to bring back Jack Campbell. Of these options, all are UFAs aside from John Gibson, where it's recently been made clear that Gibson would accept a trade out of Anaheim. Also of the highest pedigree however, Gibson comes with a salary of $6.2M annually, and would be costly to acquire in trade. The rest of the options would only command $4-5M in free agency, and the one million dollar difference would be massive with the Leafs' tightly against the salary cap.
For the backup position as honourable mentions, Siegel suggests Alex Nedeljkovic, James Reimer, Brayden Holtby, Alexander Georgiev, and Matt Murray. These goalies could be had for a cheap deal in free agency or a trade that wouldn't be overly costly, and come in the range of $2-3M in salary. Notably for the backup position, Erik Kallgren isn't mentioned, despite serving as the Leafs' backup for much of the season and proving to be serviceable for under $1M.
With it seeming a certainty that Campbell and Mrazek will be gone barring an unexpected turn of events, it's likely that at least one of these available goalies will play for the Maple Leafs next year as they again, try to compete for the Stanley Cup. Or more realistically, the second round of the playoffs.
