The Toronto Maple Leafs offered Claude Giroux the biggest contract in free agency before he decided to return to the Ottawa Senators.
After testing the free agent market, Giroux decided to re-sign with the Senators to a one-year, $2 million contract with $3 million in potential incentives.
But according to one prominent NHL insider, the Maple Leafs offered Giroux the most money in free agency before he re-signed with Ottawa.
Maple Leafs Made Offer to Claude Giroux
Writing in the Ottawa Citizen, veteran Senators reporter Bruce Garrioch said that the Maple Leafs made Giroux a big contract offer in free agency, but he turned the team down, as according to Garrioch, Giroux didn’t want to go to the league’s biggest hockey media market.
“The Citizen also reported that the Toronto Maple Leafs were interested, along with the Edmonton Oilers. The talk is that the Leafs offered Giroux the biggest contract, but Toronto isn’t the type of market that fits the mould for the kind of player that he is,” Garrioch wrote.
After spending his last four years in Ottawa, his hometown team, it wasn’t going to be easy to get Giroux to move on, given how well he has played in Ottawa and considering his ties to the city.
But the Maple Leafs tried, as did the Edmonton Oilers, and the Philadelphia Flyers, too. In the end, though, Giroux made a return to where he felt most comfortable, which is Ottawa.
It isn’t clear if the Maple Leafs made the offer before or after they signed their other free-agent acquisitions such as Jack Roslovic, Colton Sissons, and Brandon Duhaime, as those players ate up most of the Maple Leafs’ cap room after they used a lot of it on goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, the team’s top target. Either way, the Maple Leafs were very interested in signing Giroux and having him leave Ontario’s capital for the province’s biggest city.
Maple Leafs Still Hoping to Make a Big Move
Although the Maple Leafs may have lost out on Giroux, the team is still planning on making a big move, according to NHL insider Elliotte Friedman on the most recent episode of “The 32 Thoughts Podcast.”
“I think Toronto is still hopeful to add another difference maker. Now, it may not be now, it may be later, but I think that’s what they are considering. They didn’t give up any of their futures, really, and I think they have restocked some. I think they look at it as, ‘We kept that power dry to stay alive for any opportunities that may arise,’” Friedman said.
We’ll see what else Maple Leafs GM John Chayka has up his sleeve, as the Maple Leafs have limited cap room at the moment. But the Maple Leafs can go over the salary cap during the offseason, so Chayka can make a move and figure the cap out later. With the Maple Leafs gunning for the Stanley Cup next season, don’t expect Chayka to stop trying to make improvements to the roster.
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