The Toronto Maple Leafs and Morgan Rielly have agreed to an eight-year contract extension

The longest-tenured member of the Toronto Maple Leafs is going to be sticking around for the foreseeable future.

According to Frank Seravalli, the Maple Leafs have signed defenseman Morgan Rielly to an eight-year contract extension with a cap hit of $7,500,000.

Rielly was originally drafted by the Leafs with the No. 5 overall pick in the 2012 draft. After spending his post-draft year with the Moose Jaw Warriors of the WHL, Rielly broke into the NHL with a 27-point season in 2013-14.

It didn’t take long for Rielly to establish himself as a top-pairing defender in Toronto. In his third season in the league, he led the Leafs in average ice-time, logging 23:14 per game. Upon the conclusion of his entry-level contract, Rielly inked a six-year contract worth $5,000,000 annually.

The best season of Rielly’s career to date came in 2018-19 when scored 72 points in 82 games and finished fifth in Norris Trophy voting for the league’s top defenseman. So far this season, Rielly has four points through eight games and is logging 24:23 per night.

Rielly is yet another top name from the 2022 free-agent class to ink a contract before hitting the open market. Seth Jones and Darnell Nurse inked massive contracts with the Chicago Blackhawks and Edmonton Oilers respectively over the summer and Aleksander Barkov signed a new deal with the Florida Panthers right before the start of the season.

Given Jones and Nurse’s deals, worth $9,500,000 and $9,250,000 annually, Rielly’s extension appears to be a hometown discount for Toronto.

The Leafs are going to have a difficult salary cap situation to navigate next summer. With Rielly signed, they now only have about $5,000,000 in cap room available and they need to sort out new contracts for UFA Jack Campbell and RFA Rasmus Sandin.