Leafs sign Rasmus Sandin to $2.8 million contract

The Toronto Maple Leafs will be seeing Rasmus Sandin suit up for them this season after all, following the announcement of a new contract.

On Tuesday morning, the Leafs announced they’d signed the 22-year-old defenceman on a two-year contract, worth an average annual value of $1.4 million, or a total value of $2.8 million.

Sandin and the Leafs had been in a bit of a standoff, with the young defenceman yet to report to the team’s training camp or suit up for them in the preseason.

And there were legitimate fears that maybe — just maybe — the relationship had become strained between player and organization over disagreements about his value. Sandin had 16 points in 51 regular-season games last season by way of five goals and 11 assists, but did not suit up in any of the team’s seven playoff contests.

“Negotiations are going nowhere,” Lewis Gross, Sandin’s agent, told Sportsnet’s Luke Fox earlier this summer.

“Negotiating contracts via the media have an adverse impact on player [and] team reputation and traditionally do not create resolutions to private matters,” Leafs GM Kyle Dubas told Fox in the same article.

At the team’s media day earlier this month, Dubas reiterated he had no desire to discuss the details of the contract situation.

We’ll never know exactly what those conversations were like behind closed doors, but at least for the next two seasons, the Leafs have their young defender locked in on a contract.

Time — for both sides — to make it count.

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