Oh yea 100% it was a win for the Leafs lol, but I think it could have been a bigger win had we somehow not signed him lol. But like I said before, I’m gonna try and put my prejudices against him aside and look at him fresh.
Once Ceci was traded to the Leafs, he had three options: accept the qualifying offer, elect arbitration or negotiate a new deal.
There was no reason for him to elect arbitration and risk the Leafs walking away. There was no reason to just accept the qualifying offer unless he thought the Leafs were going to elect arbitration, which they had no reason to do.
That left negotiating a new contract as the only real option for him.
There is no reason to think he’d have received less than $4.5 this year in arbitration, so there was no point in the Leafs electing arbitration to get a lower AAV. The Leafs would also have been risking Ceci choosing a two-year deal, as the party that does not elect the arbitration chooses the term.
If the Leafs had elected arbitration, Ceci would have gotten at least $4.4 million just based on the rising salary cap. But in addition to the cap going up, his stats rose too. His points per game rose from 0.23 to 0.35 year-over-year and his TOI in all situations has been 23:12, 23:20 and 22:33 over the last three years, which is second only to Thomas Chabot.
The only reason for Ceci to elect arbitration and risk having no contract at the end of it is if the idea of playing on the Leafs was so bad, he’d rather be on whichever team loses someone to injury in training camp on a low-money deal.
Hope that helps you.
Link:
Why did the Leafs pick Cody Ceci over Jake Gardiner?
