Though the club has yet to make it official, both TSN and the Toronto Star have confirmed the Leafs and Cody Franson have avoided arbitration by agreeing to a one-year, $3.3 million deal.
This marks the third consecutive one-year deal Franson’s signed with the Leafs -- the first was a $1.2 million pact for the 2011-12 season, followed by the $2M contract he played on last year. With this new deal, Franson draws even with Stephane Robidas as Toronto’s second highest-paid blueliner, though it remains to be seen what fellow RFA Jake Gardiner nets with his pending deal.
At 26, Franson is coming off a year in which he posted career highs in assists (28) and points (33), but also finished with a team-worst minus-20 rating, though some of that had to do with playing big minutes (20:42 TOI average) on a team that wasn’t exactly a brick fortress defensively. It’ll be interesting to see how he fits next year on a revamped Leafs blueline -- gone are the likes of Carl Gunnarsson, Paul Ranger and Tim Gleason; in their place, the likes of Robidas and Roman Polak have been brought aboard.