Toronto Maple Leafs buy out Tim Gleason
By Cory Buck
The Toronto Maple Leafs are staying busy. After months of contract talks with current players set to become free agents, the team has turned its attention to other ways to keep their cap space flush for the upcoming spending season. Their latest move? A buyout of defenseman Tim Gleason’s contract, per TSN.
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Gleason was due $4.5 million next season and $3.5 million the season after that. This is a non-compliance buyout for Toronto so they will be eating cap space for the luxury of dropping Tim Gleason from their roster. Capgeek.com has all the details on what Toronto will pay. The team will pay Gleason just over $1.3 million for the next four seasons, but the cap hit will reflect those payments differently depending on the year.
In the first year, Toronto will eat $830K in cap space, followed by a $1.83 million hit in 2015-16, followed by two years of a $1.3 million penalty.
Gleason recorded 6 points in 56 games played in Toronto, totaling a -21 in the +/- department. His possession numbers were hardly better on a team that posted an awful second half to the 2013-14 season that ultimately saw the Leafs fall short of the playoffs while sporting the fifth most goals against in the regular season.
Now it appears the team is looking to move in a different direction along the blue line. They have a number of young prospects in the pipeline, but whether or not those players will get ice time will depend on what Toronto does with their expanded cap space on July 1 when the free agency period begins anew in the NHL.