Toronto Maple Leafs forward Nick Robertson has elected to test salary arbitration, the NHLPA announced Saturday. Robertson is one of 11 players who will go to arbitration this summer.
Eleven players have elected for salary arbitration according to @NHLPA. ⬇️
Deadline for club elected salary arbitration is Sunday evening. pic.twitter.com/F2Lxclqn38
— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) July 5, 2025
This means that the Leafs will maintain the exclusive negotiating rights with Robertson, and no other team is allowed to file an offer sheet. There will also be a hard deadline given for both sides to negotiate a new deal before the hearing date is announced later this summer.
It is the third consecutive offseason that the Leafs have an RFA file for salary arbitration. Ilya Samsonov filed for one in the summer of 2023 and went through with the meeting that resulted in a settlement of a one-year, $3.55 million contract. Connor Dewar elected to go this route in 2024 and was able to get a deal done before the hearing date, agreeing to a one-year, $1.18 million deal on July 23rd.
If the Leafs end up going through with doing the hearing with Robertson and are awarded a settlement, it would open up a second buyout window that begins three days after the hearing and lasts 48 hours. According to PuckPedia, only players with cap hits greater than $4 million and on their roster at the previous trade deadline are eligible to be bought out. It is unlikely that the Leafs actually go this route given they didn’t exercise a buyout in the first window, but the option is available to them if they want to nonetheless.
AFP Analytics projects that Robertson will sign a two-year contract with an AAV of $1.38 million. The Leafs currently have just under $5 million in cap space at the time of filing, so there won’t be any issue fitting in the contract at that number or something close to it.
Whether or not the winger ends up sticking around is a mystery given the evolving saga surrounding his future with the team. He put in a trade request last summer that proved to be unsuccessful, before agreeing to a one-year extension on September 10th. While Robertson was able to move on from the trade request as he made the NHL roster out of camp, he was unable to gain a strong foothold in the lineup and barely played in the playoffs.
GM Brad Treliving was asked by reporters about Robertson on June 26th and was non-committal about keeping the 23-year-old around for 2025-26 and beyond.
“We’ll see how it plays out. We are in the early days here, but Nick’s a great kid who possesses a real good skill set,” he said. “Again, we’re in June, the puzzle has to come into place. But I think Nick is a good player. He’s still a young player, he’s still an evolving player, but he’s got a skill set and he shoots it in the net. That’s a good skill set to have.”
Robertson appeared in 69 games last season, where he amassed 22 points (15 goals and seven assists) while adding two points (a goal and an assist) in three playoff games.