It's hard to see a scenario where the Toronto Maple Leafs end up hanging onto speedy winger Ilya Mikheyev. Ilya Mikheyev's legs seems to have finally have caught up to his hands. He was a scoring threat with bursts of breakaway speed on the Toronto Maple Leafs' penalty killing group. He lead the team with 4 short handed goals on the year.
Unfortunately for the Leafs, he really was an internal rental piece for this year's playoffs as he will certainly be seeking more than the $1.645 million per season that he has earned the past two seasons.
As was the case with Kasperi Kapanen, Andreas Johansson and Connor Brown before him, the asking price will prove too costly for the Toronto Maple Leafs. It's not so much that they can't afford it, it's that paying mid-range, non-star players big-money is something they've always been hesitant to do in the Brendan Shanahan era.
Mikheyev had a career year this past season with 21 goals and 32 points in 53 games played. The penalty kill will be worse off next season without Mikheyev's speed. With the last couple seasons he's had he will be looking in the 3 million + range. That sort of price is highly unlikely to fit into the very tight jigsaw puzzle that is the Toronto Maple Leafs salary cap. With several important renewals yet to be signed, the team has just $6 million in cap space. But even if they had a ton of space, it's doubtful they want to overpay spark-plug winger whose ceiling is probably around what he accomplished this season.
