Toronto Maple Leafs: Still Never Trading William Nylander

The Toronto Maple Leafs recently signed elite young forward William Nylander to a contract extension.

After months of holding out for a better deal, the Toronto Maple Leafs finally signed William Nylander to a contract on December first, just before the deadline that would have prevented him from playing in the NHL this season.

The deal has a cap hit of $6.9 million dollars and is 99% guaranteed to turn into a bizarrely team-friendly deal as the years go by, much like Nazem Kadri’s impossible-to-believe-it’s-real current contract.

And yet, not a day goes by without a prominent writer or media personality speculating about an off-season trade.

How can this be happening?

The Toronto Maple Leafs Kyle Dubas said, on the record, that he would not trade Nylander as long as he was the GM.  He also went on to talk about just how important the record is to him.

Unless the Leafs GM is a scumbag who puts no value on his word, William Nylander is never getting traded.  There is absolutely no evidence to support the idea that Dubas would go back on his word. I am confident in stating that he is not in any way, shape or form, a scumbag.

Dubas appears to be universally liked, admired and respected.  As far as I can ascertain, his word is as good as a written contract. I don’t care how cynical you are, you should respect people’s word until they break it.

Not Getting Traded

Kyle Dubas has given us no reason to doubt his word, so I am comfortable saying that there is a 0% chance that William Nylander will be traded next summer.  Not even if the Leafs are in ‘cap hell’ (they won’t be) and not even if he is blown away by an offer.

It won’t happen.

Nyalander is a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs as long as Kyle Dubas is the GM, which will most likely be longer than Nylander’s current contract.

He won’t be traded.

And yet, people won’t leave it alone.  They are so certain that the Leafs are going to be offer-sheeted and run into problems with Matthews and Marner getting signed that they won’t take Dubas at his word.

That’s unfortunate, because if you put aside the berserk speculation, the Leafs won’t have any trouble signing their two big name RFAs.

Most likely scenario: The Leafs lock them up to big-time contract extensions just days after they win their first Stanley Cup this June.

Even if the Toronto Maple Leafs don’t win the Cup, they will have a team so tantalizingly close that no one in their right mind would jump ship for a bit more money.  The Nylander thing was predicated on the fact he had to sign early and didn’t want to see an embarrassing difference between his and Marner’s salary.

It won’t be the same thing with the other two. No one is giving them offer sheets, and William Nyalander is not getting traded.

Can we please find something else, anything else, to talk about?