The deadline to submit a cap-compliant 23-man roster to the NHL is tomorrow at 5 p.m. To accomplish that, most teams will do all their final cuts today and the waiver list will be very long. Waiver exempt players can wait until the last minute, but chances are the Leafs will sort themselves out by this afternoon.

They waived four players on the weekend, who all cleared:


Everyone cleared waivers for the Maple Leafs


And they cut some AHLers and minor leaguers as well. As of this morning, the roster and cap hits look like this:

Maple Leafs Roster as of September 30

NameCap Hit Status
Mason Marchment$767,500??
Auston Matthews$11,634,000Active
John Tavares$11,000,000Active
Mitch Marner$10,893,000Active
William Nylander$6,962,366Active
Alex Kerfoot$3,500,000Active
Andreas Johnsson$3,400,000Active
Kasperi Kapanen$3,200,000Active
Trevor Moore$775,000Active
Nic Petan$775,000Active
Kevin Gravel$700,000Active
Jason Spezza$700,000Active
Kenny Agostino$737,500Active
Nick Shore$750,000Active
Morgan Rielly$5,000,000Active
Cody Ceci$4,500,000Active
Jake Muzzin$4,000,000Active
Tyson Barrie$2,750,000Active
Timothy Liljegren$863,333Active
Justin Holl$675,000Active
Martin Marincin$700,000Active
Frederik Andersen$5,000,000Active
Michael Hutchinson $700,000Active
Frederik Gauthier$675,000Active
Ilya Mikheyev$925,000Active
Egor Korshkov$925,000Active
Dmytro Timashov$694,444Active
Rasmus Sandin$894,167Active
Zach Hyman$2,250,000LTIR
Nathan Horton$5,300,000LTIR
David Clarkson $5,250,000LTIR
Travis Dermott$863,333LTIR
Garrett Wilson$725,000SOIR/LTIR
Kalle Kossila$700,000SOIR
Matt Read$0PTO
Retained$1,200,000
Total:$100,384,643
Total LTIR and SOIR $15,088,333
$85,296,310
Salary Cap$81,500,000
Cuts must total:$3,796,310

There are 27 or 28 active players, depending on the status of Mason Marchment, which remains a bit of mystery. So to meet the 23-man limit, there only needs to be four or five cuts. There are a lot of injured players of various sorts on this roster, and that’s why from a total cap hit of over $100 million, the Leafs are right now not even $4 million over the cap.

The two injured Leafs, Travis Dermott and Zach Hyman will be on LTIR tomorrow, as will David Clarkson and Nathan Horton. You all likely have some idea of how that works.

Two other players (and possibly Marchment) are likely to be on SOIR or Season-Opening Injured Reserve. This is a special category of IR for players who are hurt in training camp or in training before camp began. Depending on contract status, SOIR sometimes comes with total cap relief for a player who never played in the NHL in the prior year like Marchment. He won’t go on LTIR, his cap hit doesn’t count, and he doesn’t count towards the 23-man roster. For Garrett Wilson, who was hurt before camp, his one-way contract requires him to be put on LTIR since SOIR doesn’t provide cap relief. For Kalle Kossila, the calculation is complicated, and I get a cap hit of $97,849 for him. The Leafs may or may not choose to put him on LTIR to get rid of that depending on how hurt he is. I just assumed for today that his total cap hit doesn’t count.

Sorry for all of this on a Monday, here:

Add up all those cap hits that don’t count, and you come up with $3,796,310 by cutting five players, or $3,028,810 from four players if Marchment is also on SOIR.

This SOIR stuff sounds great until you remember the tale of Petter Granberg, the man who was injured in Leafs camp years back, who sat around healing up and then was promptly lost on waivers once he was ready to be sent to the AHL. It’s a whole lot easier to slide a player through on the Monday before the season starts than some random day in late October. I’m not saying someone like Wilson or Kossila will be claimed, but that’s more likely to happen later than today. But the rules say you can’t waive a player who is injured, so this is how it’s handled.

The waiver exempt players on that roster are: Timothy Liljegren, Rasmus Sandin, Egor Korshkov, Ilya Mikheyev, and they can be cut at any time between now and Tuesday at 5 p.m.