Toronto Maple Leafs Not Done: Possible Trade Deadline Targets
By James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs traded for top-pairing defenseman Jake Muzzin on Monday.
By adding Jake Muzzin, the Toronto Maple Leafs solidified the biggest weakness on a roster that was already among the best in the NHL. With a blue-line now featuring three legitimate top-thirty (AKA #1) defenseman, as well as three #1 centres, the Leafs now have one of the best rosters ever assembled in the salary cap era.
And their rivals in Tampa continue to dress Roman Polak clone Dan Giardi, not to mention Ryan Callahan.
Yes, it’s a great day in Leafland when you can honestly say for the first time in your life that the Toronto Maple Leafs have the best roster in the NHL. You might say I’m a homer, but what I am telling you is an objective fact. There are 31 teams and so one in 31 homers is actually right.
But back to the task at hand: Identifying further possible additions.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are most likely not done. They have the cap space, why would they stop now? Whether it’s a depth addition or another front-line player, it’s highly unlikely that with a month to play and the team in seventh place overall despite playing zero games with their optimal lineup, that they would be interested in restraint at this point.
It wouldn’t make any sense to enter the playoffs with Hansey and Zaitsev making up one-third of your blueline.
This is, after all, the last year in which Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews will be cheap. Sure, the team plans on competing for years to come, and they definitely will. But a situation where two of the NHL’s best players (again, actual fact, not my opinion) are without a significant cap-hit is unlikely to ever happen again.
So that means the Leafs have to take advantage.
A lot of people are worried about next year’s cap space. Well that is for Kyle Dubas to worry about over the summer when he’s drunk on Champagne he just drank out of a hundred year old trophy.