The Sheet with Jeff Marek - On the Sheet: Steve Werier on the NHL Tagging Rule, Hellebuyck, and More

Episode Date: October 21, 2026

Steve Werier joins Jeff and Greg to break down one of the biggest questions facing the Toronto Maple Leafs: their salary cap and tagging complications following the acquisition of Kirill Marchenko. What are the Leafs’ limitations when it comes to acquiring immediate assets? How could their current cap situation restrict their options, and what moves might Toronto need to make to get the money and contracts to work? From navigating the NHL salary cap to finding creative ways to improve the roster, the guys examine the challenges facing the Maple Leafs and what could come next.SHOUTOUT TO OUR SPONSORS!! 👍🏼Coca Cola: https://www.coca-cola.com/ca/en/offerings/coca-cola/hockey 👍🏼Sports Interaction: https://www.sportsinteraction.com/thesheet 👍🏼Taco Time: https://tacotimecanada.com/ 👍🏼Movember: https://movember.com/ 👍🏼DoorDash: https://www.doordash.com/en-CA Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

He is the former assistant general manager of the Florida Panthers. And I always say this, Greg, whenever Steve comes on, enjoy him now because one day he will not be allowed to do interviews like this because he'll be working in an NHL front office again. Steve Worrier joins us on the program here. First of all, Steve, you're right in Winnipeg on a scale of, you know, one to absolutely insanely crazy. What's Winnipeg like right now with, you know, everybody watching, you know, the Hullabuck situation? minute to minute second to second. What's the vibe check in Winnipeg right now? I think people are more concerned with the bombers

after last week showing. That's a CFL reference, Greg Wischinski, from the European. Listen, I have been a long-time CFL fan. Remember, for a while, it was also an American. Yes, Vegas and Baltimore. Vegas and Baltimore. So, yeah, I love the CFL, nothing but love.

Also, how can I not love to see you? Merrick, you're talking about a league that had a franchise. with a team owned by Bruce Mcnaul that had Rocket Ismail. Rocket Ishmael and John Candy and Wayne Gretke were also owner-co-owners of that team too. I know. I know.

As a 1990s fan. Yeah, it's great. You've got to watch that John Candy documentary if you have him. I've heard it's fantastic. It's amazing. I know. Yeah, I've heard. No, honestly, I think it's mixed. I think the team's been good enough.

People have sort of focused on that. And there's just been a lot of questions back and forth. how will this end? How will this play out? I think there's sort of like a bit of an overblown maybe reaction to some quarters to the whole suspension ending and like what happens next. I don't know if that's a total game changer. Like, you know, the amount of money the team will have to start paying him won't affect a couple of billionaires. But maybe like the idea of like, do we ever want to write this guy another check coming from True North? Might move them a little bit. Be like we're not doing that again. So yeah, we'll see how it plays

out, but I don't think it's sort of all-consuming for now, but I think people are pretty intrigued to see where it lasts. They're probably, you know, one or two-fourers. Let me, a quick follow-up here, because this is a huge week for Winnipeg culminating with the Heritage Classic, which is supposed to be this, you know, wonderful celebration, as it always is, outdoor games.

I know they may have lost some of their lure from a television point of view, but live event, it's fantastic. It's tremendous events to go to. am I misreading this or overplaying this by saying, I'm pretty sure that the Jets don't want the Hellebuck cloud floating all over what's supposed to be this wonderful celebration of hockey between the Jets and the Habs? Yeah, I think that's right.

But again, like, will it be if they just stay status quo? You know, pick maybe a pick up a winner or two before that game. I think people are going to still go out and enjoy the upper game. and, you know, they'll have a couple of alumni golies to watch and draft them from the goalie who's not there. Yeah, and then a giant fireplace on the ring I saw in the mock-ups. It's a very exciting time. Hey, let me ask, I don't know if you know this,

being that you were on the other side of the table for this kind of stuff, but like, what are the chances that if the Jets tell Hullabuck, stay in Michigan, here's your money, shut up, that the PA would file the grievance and make life a little bit more uncomfortable for all sides. I think that's a question you're totally asking yourself if you're Bill Armstrong, Eric Teltsky, or one of the other GMs waiting for like the optimal moment to make a trade where your leverage reaches its peak. I don't know the answer offhand, but like the answer in short is it will take time, right? Like that's what lawyers are for. So, you know, the Jess will push back.

Yeah, it's possible, right? Like this suspension was pre- not ordained, but like pre-negotiated. So it was known amongst the parties, even though we didn't know, that the end of the suspension was end of October. So it wasn't like it was in limbo and then there'd be all this chaos.

So it may be like that piece has also been resolved, right? They may have mutually agreed come October or whatever the date is. We will begin to pay you, but we don't want you to come here and you don't necessarily want to come here either. So it may not be a massive bone of contention where the PA gets in.

short answer, Greg, is that didn't come up in my day, fortunately. So, yeah, my guess is they haven't asked for already, though, and it's not something that hasn't been planned for. You brought up an interesting term, and that is pressure point. I want to get to the Maple Leafs here and their tagging issues, but before we get there, a couple more on Hallibuck. I'm always fascinated, and I think it's because I still have PTSD from the 0405 lockout and still can't figure out why the PA did a deal when there was no pressure point in July

of all them saying it's like am I missing something here like talk about like a concession speech by the PA but like what is the ultimate if you are you know as you mentioned if you're yarmouckekekeleine and Armstrong Tolski whomever may be involved here Tony Mayda what is the ultimate pressure point to do the deal because I'm with you I think managers wait for that one moment where it's like all right now we pounce what is it in this situation so there's two sides of this right it's like when do we want to get the player in here? And not necessarily just because, like, do we need him to win, but do we want to assimilate him into the team?

Do we want him out for so long? And do we maybe have some concerns that the longer he has to go through this whole ordeal, it might impact him in some sort of way going forward? There's a bit of that. And then the flip side is the more fun angle of it of, you know, at what point will Winnipeg be, you know, most willing to make a deal at a reasonable price? That's a little hard to predict, though, because all you need is two interested buyers and then it's a bidding war you respect of

you know where the jets are at so you know a team really needs to be confident that there isn't another suitor out there and if we slow play this you know we might lose the deal so you know I think at it you look at it sort of in a vacuum and impartially and say listen is there a deal right now that'll make us better and we leave a little bit of money or assets on the table but we get a player for a number of years who really we think we need you probably err on the side of making the deal rather than waiting to the last moment. It's probably not what Jets fans want to hear, but like the real pressure points next July when HelibuX no movement clause becomes a 10-team, no trade clause.

Like that's when all of a sudden he has to start thinking about, you know, the pressure on him and their ability to move him to a place that maybe, I mean, listen, if he's only, if he's naming 10 teams, It's a place he obviously is okay going to, but he'll lose the control that he has now. So, I mean, God, just none of us want to see it come to that point and have the guy sitting on his ass for a full year. But like, that's the real answer probably is when the no moving clause becomes a no trade clause. We've got to do shows every day. Yes, we do. Yes, we do.

We need to come. Yeah, 100%. You'd be shocked if they play it that far, but that is a nice moment to wait for. You sort of think if they've mutually agreed on the suspension timeline, there's maybe some. mutual expectation that will take, yeah, we'll use best efforts or reasonable efforts moving forward to not drive us out that long. Okay.

One of the reasons why I wanted to speak today is the Toronto Maple Leafs and the tagging issue with this roster. And there's a lot. By the way, Adam Fantilia having a swipe at Karel Marchenko here today in advance of the Columbus Toronto Maple Leafs game for a nice little sidebar, your honor on tonight's matchup between the two. but for those that may not be familiar and you can speak with a lot more authority on this than I can. The tagging issue for the Toronto Maple Leafs is what?

And if you begin your answer by explaining why this tagging situation is particularly difficult for the Maple Leafs right now as a sort of, I know that I think that, oh geez, who's had a whack at this pinata? I think many people have talked about this. but like if you can sort of start with you know the tagging issue itself and how it impacts negatively the Toronto Maple Leafs here sure let me start over the real quick story okay I like when I was a GN in Florida there was a summer where I wanted to extend a bunch of our young players okay who really rose gosh Barcawd Aaron Eccblad um Riley Smith and there were three reasons I thought they were good players I thought the cap was about to go up and I thought we were going to have a really good year that would drive up their market value. I was right about two of those three things.

Anyway, as I went through the summer, extending them one by one, I got a call from the league office in New York and Toronto and they said, hey, Steve, have you thought about tagging room? I said, yeah, but tell me more. They said, well, we sort of have a tracker of red, yellow, green, of each club. And this doesn't come up often. In fact, it comes up almost never. But you guys are in track to add so much future cap space right now to your next year's cap, like two years out, that there's tagging role you need to be mindful that basically says if it's you know, year 26, 27, you can only take on so many cap hits for the following season that exceeds the current year cap by at most 10% or else you're in the cap regardless of how much in your cap space

you have. And for us, and Greg, I look at this part, it was made more complicated by the fact we had a couple of like confidential settlements that I didn't even know about the time, that were off the books publicly, but actually counted against our cap from old grievances that made our cap a little more trickier than met me I before the era of Puck Pied and all that. Anyway, we had less catcalf the is going forward than we thought. And wrap me the story up quickly, I, because of the tagging issue, actually had to move out a contract for a player on multi-year deal, who wasn't really part of our core or anything, in order to free up enough future space to finalize some of the last extensions, including namely Hoover, which is all to say, you remember when the Carill

Markshanko, Matthew Nizzo went down, there was a little talk the next day about how maybe the deal was sidetracked for a few hours or so because of a tagging room issue. And what that means is, if you remember when Toronto was off-season, they signed a lot of players, a lot of their deaf signings to, you know, two, three-year deals in the two-three-million million-dollar ring, which impacts tagging again. You're talking next year's cap. And when they made the deal, Nye's for Marshanko, they took on Morshenko and extended him for $12 million, while Nyes was in the seventh, which meant they added almost $5 million of future cast base. And my understanding is that put them up against the tag payroll limit for the following year.

And that's why the deal ended up being reworked, where Emil Andrade, who Toronto had just signed, somewhat vanjely got traded to Columbus. And that deal by adding Andrade gave Toronto just enough. tag payroll room to move forward. And tag payroll isn't publicly tracked, but if I just do the numbers sort of on a sheet of paper and napkin quickly, you take all the contracts for next year that are already signed and you also add any QOs for players who are expiring, and that sort of gives you the rough number. And it looks like they have under a million dollars of tag payroll room. And the reason that problem now didn't go away and in fact is a little bit worse is because when they they traded Marshanko sorry when they trade for Marshanko Gavin Mekana didn't count for next year's

tag calculation because he hadn't yet been on the NHL roster he hadn't played NHL games but of course since that he's played only NHL games he hasn't been the miners at all and so his entire cap it which is about a million dollars right now does count for tagging which means if you were to look on you know any public website that tracks the salary cap if any of those are out there you might look and say oh Toronto has about three and a half million dollars at lTI room they could trade a defenseman for another defenseman who makes $3.5 million more next season and be fine. But that's not the case. The case is actually they are in a far, tighter predicament where they're basically money and money out for next year's cap, meaning if they were

to trade the defenseman right now who signed for $27, $28 for $3 million, they could not acquire defense for, say, six and a half because they're LTI space. They actually couldn't acquire a defenseman making more than the player they move out, unless. they make other moves to clear cap next year. And the last little footnote to just show how tricky tag is, it applied to LTI contracts. So even though a guy like Domi is on LTI right now, you have to count his full cap it for next year. Because you might come back. Yeah.

Yeah. So wait. So can you can you dial it back for a second? Like what why do we have this? Like what is why are these? Why is this in the salary cap rules? What is it trying to prevent teams from doing? I asked myself the same question when it popped up for me.

Couple reasons. Like, one is, a lot of the CDA, and we hear this with no trace, too, it's like owners ensuring against their own, uh,

largesse or whatever. Oh, God. And so at least this means like, go ahead. I was going to say you're going to give me and Merrick the shakes because whenever we start getting into, we have to save them from themselves.

Yes, I know. It brings back a special kind of PTSD. from 2004, 2005. I start to remember phrases like treadmill to obscurity and I start shivering like it's 2005 all over again. It's not great. Sorry, Steve, go ahead. No, so it's like a bit of that.

It means you can only commit so much future space no matter how many agents are calling you. That's part of it. And there's some other cap reasons as well for competitiveness that you don't sort of sign a player and then extend them. And it sort of is backdoor circumvention by making next year's number higher than this year's. But in any minute, the rule is there. And the important thing about the rule is, even though there's been all this talk about how high next year's cap will be, the tagging room is next year's calculation is based on this year's cap plus 10%. So this year's number is 104.

Next year's could be 800 million. Doesn't matter. The least tagging calculation, everyone's tagging calculation stays the same. And you have to adhere to it. Again, almost never shows up. It only applies when you take on a bunch of multi-year deals or extensions to the next season. Last thing I'll say, there's an interesting footnote. It was odd that the Leafs added Miles Wood in that Columbus deal because Wood is not playing game for them.

But it is signed next year at 2.5. So that's a contract that when you take on makes your tagging space disappear or reduces it. Whereas if Miles Wood was expiring this year, you'd have no tagging issues on next year's cap. So they'll have something, you know, little maneuvering. Steve, can I ask a question? How do I put this delicately? John Chaco was out of the league for a while. Shouldn't he have known all this about what's happening to the Leafs right now?

So like mostly for my answer. One, he might have, you know, a reasonable answer would be I knew my team needed a lot of improvement. I wanted to add these players. These players are useful. I couldn't have got them to on one-year deals. If I had, we'd be over cap. And so we're just up. against the ceiling and we're trying to make a deal that makes us better.

And we're constrained just like any team that's up against the cap right now would be constrained in the same way. Having said that, you know, there is some peculiarity with like, again, the Miles Wood edition, the deal being hung up a little bit, maybe with Columbus at the time, that makes it a little tougher to navigate. But, you know, on the flip side, you have a guy like Brandon Pridim who's there and isn't there anymore. There's probably some institutional knowledge that disappears and you come into a team like Toronto

and you're moving. Yeah. It's tough. And again, like I've been in that spot that John was in. You come in. So,

want to do a lot of moves. Yeah. I mean, the, I'm just trying to think, like, if you're a Mapleese fan, one of the things you're thinking of here is like,

okay, so I'm listening to Steve here. I'm thinking to myself, okay, so how do they get out of this, this nod before it gets too tight that they can't unravel it? And the easy, the easy answer is,

well, they got to get rid of a contract. Is it that simple? Like, do they have to, like, just bluntly, do they have to dump someone here?

if they want to make the magical here's a young defenseman who's really good with term who another team wants to trade test deal which they would if they were taking on future cap space i don't think it would be cost prohibitive like there's multiple teams in western canada that aren't competitive right now who should be willing to take on a miles wood or if you know max domi isn't playing again next year should be able to take on max domi without a big ticket So there's ways to get out of that. And there's a cost to it. The question will just be, you know, how high will that cost be? I know that's something we calculated a lot when we move out of it a few years back. Yeah, for sure. I mean, like, you know, all the Leafs have to do is attach a draft pick to somebody they don't want their contract. That's never led to deleterious effects to the Leafs.

I mean, that's been great in the past. How is that Seth Charver? That Seth Jarvis still injured? How is that guy doing out here in Carolinas? Zach, Zach is, Zach just had a heart attack. He's just slumped over the control panel right now thinking about the whole Patrick Marlowe's situation. South Jarvis haunts me. Yes, he does.

He's got a Stanley Cup ring now, too, by the way. I'm always curious because, like, you have your sort of thumb on the pulse. I'm going to move away from Maple Leafs here for a couple of seconds. I'm always curious as someone who has worked as extensively in this industry and worked with an age-to-all team, in a significant capacity. What interests you? Like every day when you wake up, like what is the moment?

For some people it's just like, okay, who won? What's the standings? How many points did McDavid have? Like, oh, look, Caprizoff scored again. Like, when you wake up in the morning, what interests you about hockey? That stuff interests me too.

But it's always fun to just look like who's doing something different, either really good or the opposite. Who's doing something really new? and you know that that's still happening and that's sort of the more interesting stuff like the story like hey let's look at like world school mismanagement is amusing but not interesting but there's a lot of teams doing interesting things right now like I just saw it today Florida's going on a road trip with like a six eight goalie um yeah that's neat it's sort of in line with if you follow this guy uh Ryan pagendetti who worked for the Eagles um in wishes country who came out and said uh you know the smartest thing in NFL team can do would be to sign tackle fall

NBA player who's like 6-11 and have him block kicks. That's sort of a neat idea. Throw out a 6-8 goalie if he covers the whole net. But yeah, like just teams doing interesting things or the science the cap or roster management. Anything fun or creative or just, you know, total chaos. See, for me, if I can just jump it, one of the things that I'm fat,

maybe this is why I'm a fan of like just reading, not just hockey, but like military history. It's a fan of like reading history books. is finding how people behave at the extremes. When everything is pushed and you're wound so tight and you're forced into a decision and the walls are, and I'll throw in a wish reference here, like Han Solo and Chubaka,

the walls are closing in. In the trash compactor on the Death Star, exactly. Like how do people react? Like I look at like, Talduos, for example, right now. The Penguins just had a horrible road trip. Like every game, they're giving up five. Like they can't win a game.

Like, okay, so it's getting to the, that and you know, Elliot reporting on Saturday, they're willing to start moving some, some older players, younger players. We wonder about Rust. We wonder about Carlson. We wonder about Raquel, et cetera. I'm always curious about like how people react under pressure where,

okay, do something right now. That fascinates me. Does it you as well? Or do you look at that and go like, oh man, I feel bad for dupes. He's going through one right now. Yeah, that was interesting, little foreseeable. Like maybe he just handled.

himself like Devin Kuling with a hybrid of the interview of Tess of Data Foster Walls and he's like the score will take care of itself, which is on the book. You know, I think Kyle probably is someone like that. Kyle is pretty well read and tries to be, I think, pretty stoic in managing stuff like that. But yeah, seeing guys, you know, under fire or just, you know, doing things radically different and testing stuff out, whether it, whether it fails or doesn't. And that's a good example. Like you don't see too many cases with the team where, you know, like Kyle comes into where, you know, here's three or four legends. Yeah. Managing. Well, also managing like how do I rebuild some covers that are, you know,

pretty super bare. Yeah. So easy. Last last one for me. I don't know if we had you on post Gary Betman talks about no movement clauses situation. No. What was your reaction when you saw the commissioner kind of say it's listen we're not saying it's a problem yet but it's certainly on our radar yeah i mean the commissioner is sort of like a backboard often for for his owners so i'm not surprised it's it's popping up as hey this is something we're going to um fight back on uh you know i think what's the number now there's like 300 plus players with with no trade or no move protection of some sort and like as much as Alan walsh can beat the drum of like those were freely given they were freely negotiated there's no problem here what are we looking at um

There are teams that will definitely want to use that hammer next time up to push back on them. So no surprise, Gary is probably saying what, you know, a few of his constituents feel very strongly right now. The one thing I keep coming back to on that one, if I can jump in, which is like, okay, but that's negotiated. And like, okay, so what's the cookie the PA gets back at you? And the thing that I keep wondering about is, okay, if you want to do that, I'm sure the Players Association will listen. We'd like to talk about buyouts. We'd like to eliminate buyouts. Thank you very much.

Like, I just wonder, like, how far those conversations go. And I understand that teams are upset about it. I know some managers are certainly miffed about the nature of no trade clauses, but give me something in exchange for nothing is not a transaction. That's charity. And I don't think the PA's in the charity business. So what are you going to give up is what I keep asking. That's a good one, though.

I mean, it cuts both ways. But if you're the PA, you say, hey, no more buyouts for under 26 players, which are only at one third. One third, yeah. You have all these young guys, you know, teams sign guys like Kristen Luno and Ville Coivine and it's like, oh, well, then, you know, those players will be guaranteed their money. On the other hand, well, that may teams more reluctant to hand out.

Those big money bets on sort of not the top tier guys, but I'm sure the PA has a long laundry list of things they'd fight for beyond casual dress codes. I'm not worried, man. We're in a time of labor peace. Everyone's doing backstrokes into piles of money. It's all good. We got nothing to worry about. PA loves not getting a piece of expansion.

Now the players should be thrilled about that one. They asked and the NHL said, no, and they said, okay, let's talk about dress code then. Not to open up that Pandora's box. I don't believe the players should get a slice of expansion. Do you? Like, their part of the pie when it comes to expansion is they get a bunch of new jobs,

isn't it? They get more jobs. I don't know. To me, everything's in negotiation. And again, to the point about pressure points. that Steve mentioned a couple of seconds ago. I found the Players Association. I'm one year and one and a half years out from doing a CBA.

I don't cave on trying to get a piece of expansion or use it as a negotiating piece somewhere down the road. I say, okay, you know what? We don't have to do this CBA right now. Where there is no pressure point for us. Instead, it's like, yeah, let's get this thing done early. And then, you know, 501, it's Lake Quarry, Yabadabado, and Fred Funstone's going home.

Like, no, you use that and say, like, okay, well, maybe right now, A year and a half out, you don't want to talk about giving us, giving the players association a piece of expansion. Maybe you will in 18 months. Yeah, if you want to be fun about it, if you're the PA, maybe you take the position of, listen, the Macon-Selliburnees and Leo Carlson's are worth $20 million a year. Shouldn't they have some control over whether or not they get traded? And let's apply that no trade protection down to post-entry level instead of for 27-year-olds. Ah. Opening stance.

Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve, see, trying to effectively end the trade deadline. Like we just won't have one anymore because no one will ever move again. Think of the money our industry would save though. At the end of the day. Network time's expensive. I can't believe, Steve, we've gone through an entire interview and we're not going to without asking you at least one thing about the Detroit Red Wings.

It's kind of gone quiet. Let me close on this one. How do you see anything moving within your sphere from either Edvinson or the Larkin file? I would think they move Larkin soon-ish, I'm just guessing. Edvinson's hard to read. Like any time I hear a GM come up with hyper-specificity and say, like, we've offered short, medium, and long-term deals.

I sort of read that if we don't have a deal close. That seems like it's over-known statements sometimes. So, I don't think I just saw a minute ago that Edmondson and his agents met again with Detroit's management. So maybe that's a good sign. There's dialogue. They seem to have been pretty clear. They're not interested in trading them.

But yeah, you think one of those shoes would drop. I'm just more mostly amused at the very loud chest beating out of Minnesota and their media about how incredible Daniel Urov is playing. And notwithstanding, he is playing extremely well. It just seems so transparent to be like, look at this pretty chip that you could acquire. It's pretty funny. I still come back to the same thing. Maybe you can lend some in state here, Steve, too.

Sean Horcough is an interim GM. Signing to Brinkett, signing Edvinson, those are things that make sense to me because ultimately it's ownership's money and you come to them and say, hey, is this a good deal? And then they sign the check if it is and they don't if it's not.

Making the larkin trade is a more complicated thing. Ownership can't do that. I still come back to the idea that you're entrusting. interim general manager with what could be the most important transaction for your organization in the next 10 years. And I can't get past that. Yeah, I can't either because I've been on the inside and it's not just the deals you're talking about that are big. It's like all the phone calls you can't take, all the deals you can't make, all those other things out there that like a very

opportunistic GM might do that could change your team's next 10 years. You're not doing any of that and you haven't done it for the last, what, five and a half months since or whatever months since you've been in limbo from the GM change. So I don't think I can help you read clarity into that. And I can't tell you you're wrong that that's a big deal to make. Yeah, I just sort of throw my arms up to me on that one and say, how can you arrive at that interim solution, which is really no solution at all. And that's really a question not for me, but for Chris Elish.

Yeah. Interesting. Great stuff. Steve, as always, thank you for your time. I know you're a busy guy and we always appreciate it. Thanks for, I'm sure you, a nice, you know, chills gone up the spine of our producer here, Zach, and I think all Maple League's fans that have had a chance to digest now and understand what the tagging rule means and how it applies to this Maple Leafs team and how there's a trouble sign ahead for John Jacobs' team here.

We'll see how they navigate this one. Steve, as always, thanks so much for stopping by. Really appreciate it. Thanks, guys. See ya. I'm so okay, Zach. You always have a home game. Steve's, like I was, thanks Steve.

I'm really excited for the Argos game. What the hell? Listen, like I was saying, like, and we have Steve on as, as much as we can, as much as he makes himself available. Like, enjoy Steve all you have. Because, like, just like we used to say about, like, remember we stopped? I used to always have Dello on. You'll then VSW show and be like, no, yeah, enjoy him why you have him.

Enjoy him why you have him. He's doing, he's doing, he's doing it. He's got a cup brain. Got a Stanley Cup. I can't get I'm called over and I'm like nomin