With the acquisition of Dave Bolland, it looks like Tyler Bozak will not be returning to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the upcoming season, unless Leafs GM Dave Nonis makes a few more trades to free up some salary.
The Leafs only have $16M of cap space remaining and only have 12 players currently signed. Toronto has a long list of players to either re-sign or let go to the free agent market before the start of the season in October. Those players include Nazem Kadri, Joe Colborne, Clarke MacArthur, Tyler Bozak, Ryan Hamilton, Carl Gunnarsson, Cody Franson, Mark Fraser, Ryan O'Byrne, Mike Kostka, and the newly acquired Jonathan Bernier.
Assuming the Maple Leafs use one of their two compliance buy-outs on Mike Komisarek, that will free up another $3.5M to get their cap space to just around $20M. But some of those guys on that list are due for a significant pay increase. Kadri, Franson, and Bernier are the most important targets, as well as Colborne and Gunnarsson in the mix too. On the plus side all five of those players are restricted free agents, so there isn't a rush to get them signed in the next week before the market opens up for unrestricted free agents.
It would look like the Leafs aren't going to sign any of their four unrestricted free agents. MacArthur and Bozak are both probably too rich for the Leafs to sign, and O'Byrne and Kostka were seldom used by coach Randy Carlyle down the stretch, so there doesn't seem to be a pressing need to sign either of those players.
