History is being made in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Washington Capitals have made it to the Cup Finals for just the second time in franchise history and first time with Alex Ovechkin. There, they will face the Cinderella Story of the playoffs, the Vegas Golden Knights: an expansion team that, like Dante Hicks, wasn’t even supposed to be here.
The Toronto Maple Leafs don’t care. The Leafs are stealing headlines with major moves in their front office. Lou Lamoriello is gone. 31-year-old Kyle Dubas is the new General Manager. Mark Hunter, spurned for the GM job, got out of Dodge. And now the Leafs have made news again, hiring former Canucks executive Laurence Gilman as Assistant GM.
It’s a great hire by the Leafs, as Gilman is massively overqualified for the job of Assistant GM. Gilman is a whip-smart and experienced hockey executive, who knows contract negotiations and the salary cap inside and out. His name has frequently come up for GM jobs around the NHL and he had an opportunity to take a job with the Carolina Hurricanes, but turned it down, citing issues with term, salary, and job description. Meanwhile, Elliotte Friedman reported that he was slated to become the next commissioner of the ECHL.
Whoa...word was Gilman was about to become next commissioner of the ECHL https://t.co/9t3P3rQdHt
— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) May 24, 2018
Clearly, he liked the opportunity in Toronto a lot more.
Gilman is most well-known for his work as Vancouver’s “capologist,” a word he never really liked, as he felt it pigeon-holed him. But it’s hard to ignore the mastery with which he wielded the cap, particularly for the 2011 playoff run.
Gilman worked wonders around the edges of the cap, shuffling players down to the AHL and back up for days at a time, just to get a few hundred dollars closer to the cap to get the full benefit of players on Long-Term Injured Reserve. Players would come back from injuries mysteriously at exactly the same time as another player needed to go on the LTIR.
By the end of the season, the Canucks had a roster that was approximately $7.6 million over the salary cap with everyone healthy, yet technically never actually exceeded the cap at any point during the season. It was a masterpiece of cap wizardry.
One of the biggest ways Gilman helped Mike Gillis maximize their salary cap space was through contract negotiations. Alex Burrows was signed to a sweetheart of a hometown discount of $2 million per year. Their most expensive defenceman was Dan Hamhuis at just $4.5 million per year.
The biggest contract coup, however, ended up being the downfall of the Gillis and Gilman regime. They wanted to get Roberto Luongo, one of the best goaltenders in the league, signed to a contract that would give them plenty of flexibility under the cap. So they signed him to a 12-year deal that paid him $10 million in the first year, but just $1 million per year in the last two years.
The contract was perfectly legal according to the Collective Bargaining Agreement at the time, and got Luongo on the roster at a cap hit just north of $5.3 million. Really, they were exploiting a loophole, as the assumption was that Luongo would retire before those last few years of his contract.
Then the NHL retroactively punished the Canucks for the contract, adding a clause to the CBA that was dubbed the “Luongo Rule.” If players retired before the end of “back-diving” contracts, the team that signed them would be hit with a massive salary cap penalty.
That contract aside, Gilman has a sterling reputation when it comes to contract negotiation. One of the last contracts he negotiated for the Canucks under Jim Benning was the Chris Tanev contract, which pays the top pairing defenceman $4.45 million per year, a bargain when you look at comparable players around the league.
That negotiating acumen will come in handy in Toronto, who currently have multiple unrestricted and restricted free agents to sign, including William Nylander, and will need to re-sign RFAs Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, Kasperi Kapanen, and Josh Leivo next year. Navigating the salary cap with those good young players demanding raises is a challenge that is right in his wheelhouse.
Gilman joins a team that already has a CBA expert in Bradley Pridham, who was promoted to Assistant GM on Wednesday. Pridham helped draft the CBA for the NHL coming out of the 2012 lockout, and is reportedly responsible for some of the team’s more innovative cap-related moves.
Having two CBA and salary cap experts might seem redundant, but being able to bounce ideas off of each other will likely make them even more effective. Also, Gilman has plenty of experience in other areas.
For example, Gilman helped the NHL design the expansion draft rules for the Vegas Golden Knights, then consulted with the Golden Knights prior to said draft.
“Laurence was instrumental in the development of our strategy,” said Vegas GM George McPhee. “He emphasized the value of our leverage, and how to use it to maximize a harvest of players, prospects, and draft picks.”
Gilman’s experience with the expansion draft will help Toronto navigate the upcoming Seattle expansion draft, but his work with Vegas also shows he understands trade negotiations and other key aspects of management.
It’s important to remember that Gilman has been working in NHL front offices since 1998. He was originally the Director of Hockey Operations in Phoenix, then subsequently wore a number of different hats: VP of Hockey Operations, Assistant GM, and GM of their AHL affiliate, the San Antonio Rampage.
Gilman will likewise take over from Dubas as GM of the Toronto Marlies.
Most importantly for the Leafs, Gilman won’t be afraid to disagree with Dubas or Pridham. He once described one of his most important jobs with the Canucks was to say “no” when Gillis had a bad idea.
That willingness to disagree was likely a big reason why Jim Benning and Trevor Linden let him go in 2015. At the time, they said they wanted more “alignment” in their front office. Gilman surely disagreed with a lot of the decisions made by Benning and Linden, who valued everyone being on the same page with them more than having a contrarian voice in the room.
The biggest loss for the Vancouver market is that he will no longer appear on TSN 1040 on Wednesdays. His evening appearances with Matt Sekeres and Blake Price had become must-listen radio, as he provided insight into the behind-the-scenes world of an NHL front office. He talked about the process of contract negotiations, relationships with players and agents, and took listeners inside the world of the draft.
While Vancouver will miss his voice on the airwaves, it’s more important that his voice returns to an NHL front office.
