Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving Explains Why he Signed Ryan Reaves to Three-Year Contract
Brad Treliving hopes Ryan Reaves can unlock some noise in what he feels is a quiet locker room.
Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving recalled Minnesota Wild GM Bill Guerin’s comments when he acquired Ryan Reaves in a trade from the New York Rangers.
"You need character on your team and sometimes you need some characters," Treliving said. "It’s not about fighting and all the rest of it. I just felt both on the ice and in our room and around our team. We needed a little bit more noise and Ryan brings that."
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The Maple Leafs signed the 37-year-old Reaves to a three-year contract worth $4.05 million. The contract will put the enforcer into his 40s by the time the contract expires.
Treliving said the third year was necessary in order to pry him from Minnesota.
"At the end of the day you’d like them all short (term) but at the end of the day you want to get the players," Toronto's GM said. "They wanted him to stay in Minnesota and he was given an opportunity to speak to teams earlier. And we were able to talk to him and work out a deal. We felt like we had to go where we had to get Ryan on board."
Reaves will strictly be a fourth-liner with the Leafs. He'll be expected to answer the bell if and when his star players get pushed around. But how effective will that be on the team's fourth line? The Leafs have tried so many different looks in that way before.
"Reaves can still get in the forecheck and make things difficult for the opposition," Treliving said.
During the 2021-22 season, Reaves scored twice in a 6-3 win against the Maple Leafs while he was a member of the Rangers. Following that contest, Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe described his team as soft and purposeless. Although he walked those comments back the following day, there have been some who have suggested that a player like Reaves was missing from a team like Toronto.
"The one thing in talking with the staff and looking at this group. It’s a quiet group," Treliving said. "I think bringing some personality to it — not to say we don’t have personalty on our team — but I think having a presence like Ryan will be a real positive influence for us."
The last time the Leafs signed a 36-year-old player or older to a three-year deal was Patrick Marleau back in 2017. In the third year, the Maple Leafs shipped a first-rounder to the Carolina Hurricanes who then bought the player out at the player's full cap penalty because he was a 35+ contract.
There is a new provision in the CBA that was established in 2020 that as long as a player's 35+ deal is multiple years and has the same salary or increased in each subsequent season, the contract will be treated as a regular standard player contract and not carry the same penalties. That makes Reaves' contract less risky in the event Toronto goes this route with the 6-foor-2, 225-pound bruiser.
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