Ahead of the opening of unrestricted free agency, the Leafs have now offloaded the three pieces they were expected or at least hoping to move for cap savings in Nikita Zaitsev, Connor Brown, and Patrick Marleau. We’ll see what the full return is from Ottawa, but they’ll end up giving up a first-round pick in the process and taking Cody Ceci back as the price of availing cap space — which adds up to about $8.5 million in savings depending on what they do with Ceci (it could be as much as $12.85 million if they subsequently offload his contract, which we’ll pencil in at his qualifying amount of $4.
Nikita Zaitsev waives for Ottawa, Connor Brown part of the trade to Senators; Leafs set to sign Kenny Agostino and Nick Shore
