Maple Leafs sign Jake McCabe to multi-year contract extension.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have signed veteran defenseman Jake McCabe to a multi-year contract extension, one with quite a few wrinkles attached to the deal.

The news was first reported by National Hockey League insider Elliotte Friedman on Monday morning, with Friedman reporting that McCabe had agreed to a 5 year contract extension with the Maple Leafs. Additionally, Friedman reported that the deal would see McCabe earn an average annual value and salary cap hit of of $4.51 million per season.

According to Friedman there are some interesting wrinkles to this deal, wrinkles that will help the Maple Leafs keep McCabe's cap hit lower than it would have been otherwise. Most notably, it sounds like the Maple Leafs are using the "deferred money" strategy that we have been hearing about so much this season, specifically in the second and third years of this contract. This has allowed the Maple Leafs to bring McCabe's cap hit down to $4.51 million per season, where otherwise it would have been at $4.7 million per season according to the NHL insider.

Here is the year by year breakdown as per Puck Pedia.

Year 1: $775K base salary, 5.225M signing bonus.
Year 2: $1M base salary, 1.5M paid signing bonus, 3M signing bonus deferred to Year 6.
Year 3: $1M base salary, 1.3M paid signing bonus, 2.5M signing bonus deferred to Year 6.
Year 4: $2.6M base salary 1M signing bonus.
Year 5: $3.6M base salary.