TORONTO — It is probably best to brace yourself for a whacky year under the Big Top with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Did you think that the all-Nazem-Kadri-updates-all-the-time were a bit much over the past month or two? Consider that a mere prelude to the mania that will surround this team if Phil Kessel and Dion Phaneuf remain without contract extensions when the puck drops in Montreal on Oct. 1.
Dave Nonis could spend another decade or more as the general manager of the Leafs and not face simultaneous decisions as impactful as these ones.
Consider: Kessel and Phaneuf are already Toronto’s two best paid players and each will be looking for an even greater financial commitment from the Leafs to pass up unrestricted free agency next July.
Betting on these cornerstone pieces will amount to betting big and in a salary-cap system you can’t afford to be wrong on those types of wagers. At least not without some unwelcome consequences.
All that we know for certain at this point is that no contract talks were held over the summer — at least according to Kessel and Phaneuf — and that the Leafs GM would prefer to keep everything extremely quiet if and when negotiations get underway.
However, there will be no muting the outside noise the longer everything remains status quo, especially since Kessel has made it clear that he doesn’t want to negotiate during the season. Despite that pronouncement, the Leafs aren’t viewing opening night as any sort of unofficial deadline.
“I don’t think it’s a circus either way,” said Nonis, with a straight face, after his players reported for medicals Wednesday. “I think if … Phil isn’t signed going into the season then we play the season and work towards the end of the year. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to get a player signed.”
He’s right about the last part — at least in theory.
The Leafs can even point to earlier this summer when they let top-line centre Tyler Bozak briefly hit the open market before signing him to an extension.
The only problem with drawing that parallel is that Kessel and Phaneuf are not Bozak. And it would be a dangerous game for team management to risk losing either player for nothing like they did with Bozak, although Nonis has shown that he has plenty of nerve in negotiations.
The biggest lesson Kadri learned from his long round of contract talks (which culminated with a $5.8-million, two-year extension on Tuesday) was that it is not easy to go through that kind of emotional process under the intense glare of the public eye.
“You guys got me in trouble a couple times,” Kadri said to reporters.
Kessel and Phaneuf have both been down this road before in the past and seem open to sharing their feelings on the process.
Kessel, in particular, has refused to shy away from questions about his contract situation. At the U.S. Olympic camp in late August, he talked about wanting to reduce distractions and on Wednesday he hinted that testing the open market wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if a new deal couldn’t be reached.
“It’s something that I think all guys look forward to — I guess being able to choose where you’d like to play,” said Kessel.
It is much too early to speculate about the possibility of either player being anywhere other than Toronto when NHL training camps open at this time next year.
Kessel has been the Leafs top scorer in all four seasons since he was acquired from Boston and Phaneuf seems to have grown nicely into his role as team captain. Last season, the defenceman logged heavy minutes and faced the highest quality of competition in the league, according to advanced stats.
Neither player could be immediately replaced from within.
While Phaneuf is ready to get working on an extension at basically any point — including when the games that count are being played — he sounds a little wary about all of the focus his situation is bound to receive.
“I’m open to negotiating during the season, but I’m not going to stand and talk publicly about the negotiations or where we’re at with negotiations,” he said. “I hope that you guys respect that. I’ll be open in the sense that if we are talking that you’ll know about it, but I think there’s some privacy that has to be kept behind closed doors too.”
The only negotiation Nonis is willing to discuss publicly right now is the one ongoing with restricted free agent Cody Franson, who missed the opening day of training camp.
Talks appear to be at a standstill.
And the Leafs GM made it sound like he was going to continue talking a hard line with the 26-year-old defenceman — just as he did with Kadri — because the salary cap won’t permit him to do anything else.
“There’s the realities of where you are,” Nonis explained. “We have ‘X’ amount of cap space, we have players that are going to try to make this team that may eat up some of that. There’s only so much we can do to get a deal done.”
That statement is just as true now as it will be next summer, when the salary cap is expected to climb closer to $70 million and should help dictate how far the Leafs can stretch their wallet for Phaneuf and Kessel.
Together, it is not inconceivable that those players might end up earning a total of $15-million annually on new contracts. That is a sizeable commitment.
In the meantime, everyone will be left to wait, wonder and watch.
“I’d prefer you guys not ask every day but I know it’s not going to happen,” said Kessel. “So I don’t care. You can ask every day and we’ll see what happens.”
Step right up: Everyone is more than welcome to take in the show.
The regular season starts in less than three weeks. The trade deadline passes on March 5. And next summer is not is far away as it seems.