Joseph Woll will finally make his season debut when the Toronto Maple Leafs host the St. Louis Blues, Fraser Minten takes the morning skate and Max Pacioretty remains out with a lower-body injury. WINNIPEG — The Toronto Maple Leafs have announced that they have signed defenseman Jake McCabe to a five-year extension with an average annual value of $4.51 million per season. According to Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman, deferred money between years two and three of the extension brought the average annual value of the contract from approximately $4.7 million to $4.51 million. It's believed that this is the first time the Leafs used deferred payment in their deals. The Carolina Hurricanes brought attention to this strategy this summer when they used it on a pair of deals, including one to forward Seth Jarvis. The strategy can bring the salary cap hit down, which it has done for McCabe. According to Puckpedia.com [https://puckpedia.com/team/toronto-maple-leafs], the deal will pay McCabe $23.5 million in total with $3 million of his second year compensation and $2.5 million of his third-year compensation paid out in year six, after the term of the playing term of the deal expires. The Maple Leafs and McCabe's camp reportedly discussed this summer, and the player recently expressed his desire to stay in Toronto when training camp opened up in September. He was set to become an unrestricted free agent at the end of the upcoming season. McCabe has been a consistent presence on Toronto's blueline since they acquired him a trade with the Chicago Blackhawks in February of 2023. Chicago retained half of the player's $4 million cap hit in a bigger deal that also saw Toronto trade away their first-round pick for the 2025 NHL Draft. The 31-year-old defender has nine goals and 27 assists in 106 games over parts of three seasons with Toronto. The player has consistently played in Toronto's top-four defensive group, usually situated in a 3-4 spot as part of a shutdown pair and has been consistently used on the team's penalty kill. His physical presence on the blue line came at time when the club was missing that style of play brought from someone like Jake Muzzin, who was forced to retired due to a neck injury.
