What will the Leafs do about Nick Robertson? What can they do? It is mildly absurd that a player of some value, but not much, value ends up eating up this much cognitive energy, but it's not the first time the ELC/RFA system has produced this sort of problem for a team.

History

Robertson turns 24 in training camp this fall. He has never played a full NHL season, but this season he came the closest with 69 games played in the regular season and three in the playoffs. This was also the first year he played no AHL games.

All he does is score, is the line that describes him best. You can mean that as glowing praise, outrage that two very different coaches have little time for him or the reason for the coaching decisions. It's the little black dress of one-liners. Weddings, cocktail parties, funerals, it fits everywhere.

He played the most minutes ever in the NHL this year: 10.76 per game at five-on-five. Up from 10.44 the year before. He played a very small amount on the second unit power play, the least of any regular there.

He was the 10th best forward in Points per 60 minutes and sixth in Goals per 60 minutes. His primary assist rate was defensive defender level. His shot rate was elite forward level. His Expected Goals rate was fourth liner level. He scored over expected. He's always been this mix of good and bad.

A look at the Expected Goals plus/minus from the Evolving Hockey RAPM model (the one that makes the charts with the purple and orange bars) shows him the second worst regularly rostered player on the Leafs, ahead of only Simon Benoit and just behind Conor Dewar.

Robertson signed his ELC for an AAV of $850,000 in 2019. It slid twice, and he was an RFA with no arbitration rights in 2024. He wanted a trade, the Leafs tried to trade him, no one wanted him, so he ended up signed to a one-year deal for $875,000. He showed up to training camp in great shape with a good attitude and committed to getting a roster spot. He looked like a player giving all he had in every 10 minute burst in every game he played. $875,000 is too much to spend for 10 minutes a game some of the time. (Yes, yes, I know – Ryan Reaves, though. One stupid idea doesn't excuse another.)

Robertson now has arbitration rights and his Qualifying Offer, due on June 30 is $918,750.

Now forget about Robertson for a bit.

Connor Dewar

Connor Dewar, late of the Leafs, turns 26 soon, so he is two years older than Robertson. He was drafted in 2018, one year before Robertson.

He signed his first contract in 2019 and it did not slide because he was too old, leading him to become an RFA with no arbitration rights in 2022 at age 23. He signed a deal with Minnesota at an AAV of $800,000 for two years, which made him an RFA with arbitration rights at age 25 in 2024. By then he'd been traded to the Leafs.

Dewar played 11.7 minutes per game in his 2023-2024 season, split between the two teams. He scored goals very poorly, but had a good assist rate, making him seem like a good depth player. He is an okay fourth-liner, and no one would suggest he's more than that.

His qualifying offer heading into arbitration was $892,500, and he signed for one year at $1.18M before the hearing. If you imagine that the Leafs were going to go into arbitration offering the QO amount, and he was asking $1.5M, the halfway point between them is $1.196M. An ask of that amount is not outrageous, and neither is the team offering the QO amount. Arbitration on a player of his stature with a decent points pace for his role is going to hit that middle spot. The Leafs signed him for an amount approximately equal to what the arbitrator would have given him.

It was over the buriable amount. This is the key point of this trip down memory lane. An okay fourth liner of no great value who kept his expectations low ended up, through the process of QOs which rise automatically and arbitration, which loves the middle ground answer, slightly overpaid by the market rates of a still fairly flat cap.

And he ended up traded. No surprise there either. The story used to go that if you took Lou Lamoriello to arbitration he'd trade you, and this was gleefully told as evidence of his hard-headed authoritarianism. I think if you're a fourth liner and you end up paid over the buriable amount, you're going to end up on a tanking team. By the way, the QO the Penguins have to offer Dewar this week is only $819,000 because the Leafs larded that contract with signing bonus to keep the next QO low.

Robertson's Arbitration Case

Robertson doesn't really have much of an arbitration case. Dewar didn't either, but all it takes is the right ask, not too out there, but high enough that you get the raise you're after.

Robertson's base is $918,750. If he asks for $1.5M, an arbitrator is likely going to land at $1.2M. The Leafs would have to offer the Dewar deal to avoid arbitration, and get him closer to the buriable amount, and even then, he likely wouldn't take it.

I can really understand why the Leafs don't want to pay over a million for Robertson. The hard truth of the NHL is that if you want a depth job, you should shave the AAV down to $800,000 and consider the lack of moving costs from changing teams every two years the compensation.

But it sure seems like most players in this class don't think they are just generic depth players, and that's easy to understand. You don't get to the NHL draft, to the second or third round, and into the NHL itself without an outsized belief in yourself and an ability to block out anyone who has a more tempered view. Not very often, anyway. Players seem to figure this out at UFA age, when they are choosing between that top-six job they always wanted, just in the Swiss league, vs the grind of 10 minutes a game in the NHL. The pay – from things I've seen – is pretty close to the same. Suddenly they're a minimum salary player, just happy to be there.

To Qualify or not To Qualify

This is not at all like the Timothy Liljegren conundrum. That situation was borne out of a very good arbitration case based on TOI, and a contract that outraged the masses, while being about a million under the likely arbitration award. And he was tradeable, albeit with difficulty. Nonetheless, the Leafs got some kind of asset out of a situation they put themselves in by not addressing their defence the prior year.

Robertson has proven to be a difficult player to move, likely because of the situation the Leafs are in right now. His QO is high, his arbitration eligibility is going to get him one more year very overpaid, and then... well, I sure hope that's some other team's problem.

I can see the case for just not qualifying him and giving up whatever chance there is at whatever junk draft pick they'd get if they traded him. Dewar and Conor Timmins combined to bring back one fifth-round pick. Whoo-hoo!

No one is going to want Robertson as a throw-in in a trade because of this arbitration issue. There is some tiny chance he could be swapped with some other team's arbitration-eligible RFA who is going to get overpaid. This could be a viable solution if that guy's skills are a better fit. But how likely is it the Leafs could just fill that niche with $775,000 on a 27-year-old who has had his moment of sad realization? Or $1.5M for someone with something to offer that's not just the one skill.

Sometimes it's just the best option for everyone to let the player go. Maybe that's the case now.

Offseason