Toronto Maple Leafs Rumour Round-Up

The Toronto Maple Leafs are the biggest, most popular, most widely discussed team in the NHL.

This means that there are always Toronto Maple Leafs rumours of some sort floating around, so today we’ll tackle some of them.  Obviously, with Nylander on the sidelines, rumours about the Leafs trading him never stop, but honestly, you’ve got to think pretty little of the Toronto Maple Leafs management if you think they’re going to trade him.

Personally, I think it is impossible to trade Nylander for fair value – not just because he’s holding out, but because the history of trading elite young wingers says it can almost never be done.  Since I know this, Kyle Dubas knows this.  They’ll sign him.  It’s taking forever, but I think we can ignore almost all Nylander rumours.

The main one of course is the Carolina Hurricanes.

Carolina Hurricanes

On Monday against the Flames, there were apparently 15 scouts from other teams in the building, including the assistant GM of the Hurricanes.

On Wednesday against the Stars, there was this:

Now, while this only added to the Nylander speculation, I think it’s important to remember that Carolina doesn’t have anyone you’d trade Nylander in a one-for-one trade except for recent #2 overall pick Andrei Svechnikov (which would at least give the Leafs another few years of an ELC deal) or Dougie Hamilton (arguably the best defenseman in the world) or Sebastian Aho (probably even better than Nylander).

Now there is a zero percent chance the Hurricanes move any of those guys.  The rumours are always about Brett Pesce.  If the Leafs were going to trade Nylander for Brett Pesce, they might as well just fold. It would be the single worst trade in the history of a team that has made almost all of the NHL’s worst trades.

But what if the Hurricanes sweetened the pot?  Well, they are one of the NHL’s best teams so their draft picks aren’t worth anything.  Also, trading an elite player for a package of non-elite players is always a bad move. In the NHL the only real edge is between first line players and everyone else.   A quantity for quality package is always a loser for whoever gets the quantity.

Safe to say a Leafs Hurricanes deal makes sense though – with De Haan, Faulk, Slavin, Pesce, and Hamilton the Hurricanes have the best blue-line in the NHL.   I would say, however, that any Leafs / Hurricanes trade would be centred around someone other than Nylander.

Other Rumours

From Eklund to Elliotte Friedman,  I’ve heard several people mention the Flyers as destination for Nylander.  The Flyers do have several great young defenseman, but Shane Gostisbehere is 25, making him too old to swap for the 22 year-old Nylander. Travis Sanheim is good but he won’t ever be a #1 and so that’s a bad trade for the Leafs.

Ivan Provorov makes sense, who cares if he’s a left hander? But are the Flyers really going to trade a guy who scored 41 points as a 20 year-old defenseman, who has the ability to be the best defenseman in the NHL eventually?  I don’t know.  I do know this is one of the few trades I could get behind in a Nylander deal, but it’s also not a rumour.  No one in their right mind suspects the Flyers would trade Provorov.

So, almost all of today’s Leafs rumours involve Nylander for Brett Pesce, which is a deal almost EXACTLY like Taylor Hall for Adam Larson.  Basically, the Leafs don’t have Peter Chiarelli in the fold, and there is no reason to suspect that Kyle Dubas is bad at his job, so I think we can safely disregard.