It doesn’t appear that the Maple Leafs will be signing defenseman Jani Hakanpää after all. After nearly two months without registering his reported two-year, $3MM agreement, TSN’s Chris Johnston said on First Up 1050 on Tuesday that “the writing doesn’t appear to be too encouraging” on the Leafs getting Hakanpää to ink a deal.
Hakanpää, 32, was still recovering from the knee injury that truncated his 2023-24 campaign with the Stars when his deal with Toronto was reported on July 1. It was his first time on the open market since 2021 when he inked a three-year, $4.5MM deal to join Dallas. The Finnish veteran still thinks he can play through the injury, which Johnston says has left his knee “basically bone on bone.” The Leafs’ medical team and some other outside medical opinions contradict that sentiment, leading to his continued free agency.
Even if he doesn’t sign with Toronto, Hakanpää’s options will likely be limited if he elects to play through the injury. Only a few, if any, teams will sign him if he can’t pass a physical. The 6’6″, 225-lb right-shot defender was a valuable presence on the Dallas blue line for the past few seasons, averaging north of 18 minutes per game and totaling 40 points, a +29 rating, 136 PIMs, 363 blocks and 668 hits in 226 games. He had decent possession quality numbers, controlling 47.7% of expected goals at even strength despite being used heavily in shutdown situations.
It’s a tough break for the Leafs, who were hoping to either utilize Hakanpää as a defensive anchor on a pairing with Morgan Rielly or Oliver Ekman-Larsson, or potentially even in a stay-at-home pair with Jake McCabe. They would have needed to clear cap space to add him to the roster, though. Toronto has just over $1.25MM in projected cap space with a roster size of 21, not enough to fit Hakanpää in at his reported $1.5MM cap hit.
Insurance I would imagine is the problem. Why not write language in the deal that if he misses more then 12 total games or 5 consecutive his deal can be terminated. I don’t know how the league or PA would view that or also how a team could manipulate that wording for him to miss time to free up the cap space. Because he is t a 35 yr old plus player he isn’t eligible for a performance bonus deal but I’m sure they could figure it out. Maybe sign him to a 1.25M deal over 2 -3 years with year 2/3 having 1M in bonuses available to make up the difference. At this point I think there is more to it then the knee if they haven’t worked it out yet
the Leafs don’t care about insurance. 1.5m is petty cash to them. it’s likely the use of a contract spot and potential cap space for a guy who clearly they can’t even get on the same page on
These types of situations don’t happen very often. Adding to this, “The Finnish veteran still thinks he can play through the injury…” will be followed by, “I’m not dead yet!”
And yet another mistake by this organization. Brad Treliving is starting to get sucked into the whirlpool that brings down everyone at some point.
yeah huge mistake. this team should crumble lol