Insider Pegs Expensive Price Tag For A Max Domi Re-Signing With Maple Leafs

He was brought in on a one-year, $3 million 'prove-it' type deal, and while it took a while for Max Domi to really make his presence felt in the Toronto Maple Leafs lineup, eventually, he did wind up being a valuable piece of the forward group—whether playing wing, or out of position as a makeshift centre.

Both sides seem interested in a Domi return to his hometown Maple Leafs, and conversations have begun, though no numbers have been exchanged yet. That, it seems, is where things could get tricky.

There are two wildly varying contract projections for Domi put out there by hockey insiders thus far. While Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff figures that Domi should be good to go with a 2-year, $3.5 million AAV deal, Pierre LeBrun of TSN & The Athletic figures it'll take a massively larger agreement to get an extension done in Toronto, as he says that "term will be key":

I would imagine five or six years at between $5 million and $6 million (AAV) would get it done.

Whoa. That's quite the difference.

But as LeBrun asks, can the Leafs afford that with all of the other things they need to get done this offseason (greatly shoring up the defense and adding an "upper-echelon" goalie, as we reported on Thursday)?

If a Mitch Marner trade is somehow facilitated, erasing his $10.9 million from the books, then perhaps they'll have room to re-sign both key UFA forwards, Domi and Tyler Bertuzzi.

But it should be quite interesting to see where in that substantial gap from 2x$3.5M to 6x$6M negotiations settle for Domi.

A Toronto cynic might suggest that, given how the Leafs have tended to overpay their players to stay in recent years, the larger, latter figure could be the prediction for what Toronto would need to do to keep him, while the much smaller 2x$3.5M number is all Domi could expect on the open market.

The 29-year-old finished the season with a career-low tying nine goals, but did register 38 assists, the second-best mark of his career, while posting a +10 plus/minus rating. He also clicked well on a line with Auston Matthews in the latter part of the season.