Toronto Maple Leafs: Potential Trade Chips
The Toronto Maple Leafs are on the verge of being one of the best teams in the NHL.
When the Toronto Maple Leafs added Jonathan Tavares on July 1st, it settled the argument about whether or not the Leafs are going for it now or still rebuilding.
While the Leafs have put together a core that should allow them to compete for years, (Matthews, Tavares, Rielly, Andersen, Marner and Nylander) certain factors make the 2018-19 season likely the best chance they’ll ever have. Here’s why:
- Matthews and Marner remain on Entry-Level Contracts, meaning they are dirt-cheap compared to their actual value. This means that the 2018-19 season will be the best for the Leafs in terms of how many good players they can fit in under the Salary Cap.
- Tavares isn’t getting younger and Matthews is just entering his prime. The combination will be solid for years, but it’s likely that it peaks over the next few seasons. If there is a three year window when the combo of Tavares and Matthews will be at its best, then it makes sense that out of those three years, the year where Matthews is still on his ELC is the best year of all, due to the cap-space issue.
- Tavares, Gardiner, Rielly, Kadri, Andersen, are all in their primes.
- Carrick, Dermott, Brown, Hyman, Johnsson and Kapanen are all offering very nice value vs their cap hits..
- Cap Space
- Assets not on the NHL roster available for trade.
When you combine all of these factors, it’s clear that the upcoming season is one in which the Leafs are blessed with a once-in-a-life-time situation that they obviously can’t pass up.
This doesn’t mean they blow the doors off their ability to compete long-term, it just means that they have an unusually good chance next season, one where all the factors are aligning in their favor, and they are going to need to take advantage of that fact.
This means that they are unlikely to enter the season (or at least the playoffs) with their current roster. The Leafs lack toughness, they lack a power-forward, they lack an elite defensive forward and the right side of their blue-line could use a massive upgrade.
But to get you’ve got to give. Here is a list of the Toronto Maple Leafs most tradable assets:
Travis Dermott
Why you Keep him: Dermott is young, cheap and last year he was excellent. The potential of a player like him is hard to guess, because while he was very successful (especially when paired with Connor Carrick). Dermott was also in a bottom-pairing role and did not have to face the tough competition that Rielly and Gardiner did.
Regardless, he’s set to patrol the same third-pairing minutes this year and it’d be hard to ask anyone to do better than he has so far in that role. And, if you trade him, you might regret it.
Why you Trade Him: The Toronto Maple Leafs are pretty stacked on the left side. Morgan Rielly and Jake Gardiner are two of the best defenseman in franchise history, and they are highly unlikely to be surpassed by Dermott this season, (if ever).
But Dermott’s trade value might surpass his value to the team on a third pairing. The Leafs also have replacement players available to fill the role – Andreas Borgman, Calle Rosen or Martin Marincin. Not to mention that if the Leafs upgrade their right side, Ron Hainsey could be a solid third pairing left-side dman.
Recommendation: I would not trade Travis Dermott. The obvious way for the Leafs to get better is to pair Rielly and Gardiner on the top pairing. There is evidence that together they are excellent, and it allows you to move Dermott into a higher role, making it a win-win situation.
You could do a lot worse than Dermott-Carrick on your second pairing. This would also allow the Leafs to set their sights lower on the right-side dman upgrade and concentrate on using their assets to get a forward.
Jake Gardiner
Why You Trade Him: Jake Gardiner is, regardless of what you may think, one of the NHL’s best defenseman. Maybe he isn’t top five, and maybe he isn’t top ten, but he’s close. The fact is, there is little to choose from between the 5th and 20th best defenseman anyways, so such distinctions don’t matter.
All we should care about is this: Only 14 defenseman in the NHL scored more points than Gardiner last year. Almost all of them were on their team’s first PP unit, and Gardiner was not. Hardly any of them have the defensive impacts that Gardiner does.
Very few of them are as good defensively as Gardiner. Sure, his style sometimes leads to give-aways, but it is a style that always produces more shot-attempts, shots, scoring-chances and goals for his team than it does for the opponent. Always. Every mistake Gardiner makes is blown way out of proportion by a fan base that made him a whipping boy through some dark years.
But there are facts in this world, and Gardiner being an elite player is one of them. When every single way we have to measure a hockey player’s performance says he’s good, then he’s good. You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
So why trade him? You wouldn’t. Gardiner is the Leafs best defenseman and the only way he gets traded is because the team might not be wiling or able to re-sign him beyond this season. The argument is that you get what you can while you can.
Why You Keep Him: The argument for trading away pending UFAs is terrible. It does not account for what the player will do for you while you still have him. Gardiner cannot be traded in a trade that would improve the Leafs now. Pending UFAs don’t have full value, so any move for the future makes the team worse now. Considering we’ve established beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Leafs are in ‘win-now’ mode, trading Gardiner for futures makes no sense.
Besides, if he does walk, you recoup his cap space. That + the Wins he’s worth between now and next season make keeping him a no-brainer, regardless of where he plays next year.
Recommendation: Obviously, you do not trade this misunderstood saint of a hockey player.
Nazem Kadri
Why You Keep Him: Nazem Kadri is one of only eight centres in the NHL to score 30 goals in both of the last two seasons. He brings some grit the team otherwise lacks. And he if he’s not the best third line centre in the NHL, he’s awfully close.
Also, he’s a home-grown player born near Toronto and drafted by the Toronto Maple Leafs. He is on an insanely team-friendly contract and, very recent draft picks not withstanding, he’s turned out to be about the best Leafs draft pick in probably 20 years. After watching him grow through years of lousy teams, it would be a shame to move him now that the team is good and he’s reached his potential.
Why You Trade Him: Kadri’s contract and skill make him a very valuable trade piece. Plus, William Nylander could replace him as the team’s third line centre, and the Leafs would still have the best 1-2-3 punch in the NHL.
Emotionally, it’s a non-starter. Kadri paid his dues and he’s a deserving member of the core of this team, and should get a chance to see through what he’s helped to build. But from a purely transaction standpoint, he’s the Leafs best trade chip.
You can replace Kadri a player who has a higher ceiling, without losing a step now. The match-ups can be sheltered, if need be, so Nylander could be given time to grow into the role. The Leafs also have an excess of wingers, making the loss of Nylander as Matthew’s wing-man inconsequential.
Centres have a much bigger effect on the game, in general, than wingers, and signing Nylander as a centre instead of a winger is a better option for the Leafs.
If you plan to do everything it takes to win, then I think you have to at least consider making trades like this that take from your strengths to address weaknesses.
Timothy Liljegren
Why You Keep Him: Timothy Liljegren is the Leafs top prospect. He is a right handed defenseman with unlimited potential. He could potentially make the team this season, since the competition is so weak. If he does, he’s not tradable. If he can help the Leafs now, for the cost of an entry-level contract, then there is no way they can recoup that value in a trade. Maybe if he played a different position, but not with him playing the Toronto Maple Leafs weakest one.
Since you don’t know his potential, there’s also a big element of risk to moving him.
Why You Trade Him: The reasoning behind moving Liljegren is simple: moving him does not detract from the current roster, despite him being arguably the most valuable player that the team has that they would reasonably consider trading.
Now, if he’s NHL ready it’s a different story, but by almost all accounts he’s not ready. (Note: people with access tend to error on the side of caution, so he very well could be. He wouldn’t be the fist ‘no chance’ player to crack an NHL lineup.) If Liljegren is playing in the AHL, then, given the insane amount of factors converging which make this the year to go for it, the Leafs should definitely trade him.
Liljegren coupled with a first round pick would be the kind of package that, if you’re willing to part with, you could probably have your pick of rental players. Or close enough. It’s the kind of package that should be able to turn the Leafs from ‘one of’ the best teams into ‘definitely the best team ‘ in the NHL.
Trading Liljegren is not the most desirable option, but chances like the Toronto Maple Leafs are getting this year rarely, if ever come along. They can have a great core for a decade, but there’s no guarantee they’ll ever get a chance where they can fit so many star player in under the salary cap again.
The Leafs will never have a better chance to win than in the last year of Marner and Matthews’ entry-level deals. To just happen to have Andersen, Gardiner and Tavares all in their primes at the same time is like having the stars all line up in your favor.
Since this is the case, the team needs to make an aggressive move to cement their chances. They are going to have to swing for the fences on one big trade, and moving either Kadri, Dermott or Liljegren is what it’s going to take to win a Stanley Cup.
In the NHL, you have to take risks to win. Inevitably, this will all come back to the non-sense about past Leafs teams and their penchant for trading the future for the eternal present. This isn’t that, and any mention of past teams is a terrible false comparison.
The NHL, today, is a salary cap league. Past Leafs team’s lack of patience have no bearing on the fact that MItch Marner and Auston Matthews, should the team wish to defer their bonuses until next year, can be used for something like the league minimum. This despite the fact that they are two of the best players in the NHL. In all subsequent years, they will cost a minimum of $20 million dollars. Therefore, it is imperative that the Leafs take advantage of the situation.
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The Toronto Maple Leafs can’t make decisions based on the ghosts of their pasts. This is the time to be all-in and there will never be another chance like this. Unless you think the Leafs can be reasonably assured of having two of the league’s best players on entry-level contracts at some point in the future, now is the time.
And if that means that Timothy Liljegren plays his first game in another uniform, so be it.