This morning, that number has now been split in half.
The Maple Leafs officially extended qualifying offers to four players early last night: Mitch Marner, Andreas Johnsson, Kasperi Kapanen, and Michael Carcone, therein ensuring the signing rights to each recipient remain with the organization for at least another year.
The move is far from a surprising one. As is the case with most situations of this nature, it is highly unlikely that any RFA will actually accept their one-year qualifying offer outright, opting instead to negotiate a longer-term deal if they haven’t already (like Kapanen and Johnsson) or, in Marner’s case, force his own way out of town.