Sunday: Toronto has officially registered the contract, per PuckPedia. The deal contains a signing bonus of $695K and a base salary of $775K, the league minimum. Hakanpää also received an eight-team no-trade clause.
Wednesday: Defenseman Jani Hakanpää’s eventful trip through unrestricted free agency ended after an offseason full of speculation. The Toronto Maple Leafs made public that the team has signed Hakanpää to a one-year contract worth $1.47MM.
Back at the beginning of the offseason on July 1st TSN’s Darren Dreger reported that the Maple Leafs and Hakanpää agreed to a two-year contract with Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman relaying a $1.5MM cap hit each season. Mum was the word after that as Toronto never registered the contract with the league offices as Hakanpää’s knee injury became a cause for concern. Hakanpää’s year during the 2023-24 season was cut short on March 16th as he underwent an arthroscopic procedure.
After debating whether or not Hakanpää would be healthy enough to play on Toronto’s blue line the team ultimately decided to mitigate their risk with a one-year deal. Despite the relatively low cap hit it complicates an already tight Maple Leafs’ cap structure. The team entered the afternoon with approximately $400K in salary cap room according to PuckPedia and Hakanpää’s salary will now put them in negative territory.
The risk may be solid as Hakanpää’s last three years with the Dallas Stars were more than quality. He scored a mild 12 goals and 40 points over 226 games but his 668 hits and 363 blocked shots over that span made him one of the more physically oppressive defensemen in the league. The Stars played a suffocating style on defenseman and Hakanpää was one of the reasons their structure became so restrictive for opponents.
There won’t be much expectation for high levels of ice time at 5on5 play for Hakanpää but he should see a healthy amount of minutes on the team’s penalty kill. He jumps from a penalty kill ranked 8th last season to one that was ranked 23rd. He also should help Toronto keep the puck out of their net. The team wasn’t horrible in that category last season by any stretch of the imagination but their 3.18 GA/G did rank 21st in the league which could be improved upon.
His benefit to Toronto’s blue line will only be important if he is available making his knee injury something to monitor. If he can play much of the regular season the Maple Leafs’ defense will certainly be nastier to play against this year, especially after factoring in the team’s free addition of Chris Tanev earlier in the summer.
This season’s Klingberg?
I don’t think so. Klingberg was already on the downfall, Hakanpaa played very well last year before his injury. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think he played 62 games, +18, over 100 hits and averaged 18 wins a game. He’ll go as far as his knees let him. Klingberg was a hope and prayer and his salary was 4 million higher
@Pmedic — Close. He played 64 games last year on those creaky knees, was a +10, and had an ATOI of 18:39, with the usual bad Takeaways to Giveaways ratio that is typical of big D-men. Spot on with Klankberg, too. He seemed to have already chartered the S.S. Minnow to get to his spot on the beach at Robidas Island.