Late last week, the Carolina Hurricanes signed restricted free agent forward Seth Jarvis to an eight-year extension with a very unique deferred salary clause. The clause allows the Canes to lower his cap hit from $7.9M to $7.4M over the course of the deal.

The clause is something that is rarely used, and until Jarvis’ deal, was publicly unknown to have existed for NHL players. As soon as it became public knowledge, many Leafs fans were asking why the team has not already taken advantage of deal like this. Well, that could change in the next year as both John Tavares and Mitch Marner are due for extensions, and although Tavares’ next extension will be cheap by his current standards, the deferred salary option may be appealing to the Leafs if the team opts to bring Marner back.

For instance, if Marner were to sign an 8-year extension that had a cap hit of $12.25M per season, and the two sides agreed to defer $2M per season for eight years past the expiration of the contract Marner’s cap hit would only rise $600K from his current $10.9M cap hit. The caveat here, though, is that the Leafs would have to carry that $2M in dead salary until the terms of the deal are met.

In Tavares’ case, a deferred contract makes much more sense given the fact that he is now 33-years-old. The most likely outcome for Tavares has been reported as a three-year extension. Even with a cap hit that will be significantly less than his $11M this season, deferring salary for three years past the extension would drop a $7.3M (3 x $22M extension) cap hit down to $6.6M, almost cutting his cap hit in half from his current contract.

With the cap projected to rise exponentially over the next few seasons, deferred cap hits won’t affect the long-term cap constraints of the Leafs very much, although, the last time this angle was pushed, COVID hit and changed everything. In the present, with the team in ‘win now’ mode, such deals would give the Leafs some needed financial flexibility to add more pieces to the roster.

I’m not sold on it one way or another, given the dead cap space that the team would have to carry, but as long as they’re not abusing this tactic and can keep the dead space to a minimum, I don’t see a problem with it.