The Toronto Maple Leafs are (one assumes) working the phones in preparation for Monday’s Trade Deadline.
The Trade Deadline is tomorrow at 3 PM, and all eyes are on the Toronto Maple Leafs to see what, if anything, they do to improve their team.
Since the Leafs are a titanium vault when it comes to leaking information, there are no significant rumours out there, but people are focusing on players who make sense.
Players like Radko Gudas, or Josh Manson.
We can only hope that terrible ideas like Adam McQuaid, Roman Polak or Luke Glendenning so not prove true. Adding any of those players would be the equivalent of making the team worse on purpose.
Toronto Maple Leafs at the Deadline
One problem that may prevent the Leafs from making any significant moves is their lack of cap space. They’ve currently got under $5 million, but my understanding is that they have to save that to pay the bonuses to Mitch Marner and Auston Matthews. They can roll it into next season, however they already have a lot of money committed already to next season and still have at least three RFAs to sign.
So what he have is a lack of rumours and a possible lack of cap space, which leads to the following questions:
Can the Leafs find someone to take Nathan Horton’s $5 million cap-hit?
Can they get someone to bite on the awful Nikita Zaitsev?
Would they consider taking away Ron Hainsey so that Mike Babcock will be forced to properly deploy his defenseman?
Will they land that elusive partner for Morgan Rielly? One way to do that would be to move Nylander permanently to centre and trade Kadri to the Hurricanes for Brett Pesce.
Will they trade for more grit and toughness?
Will they add depth on the wing?
Are they satisfied with Lindholm and Gauthier as their fourth line options? They shouldn’t be.
Will they be willing to use their two biggest trade chips, which are their 2020 first rounder and Timothy Liljegren.
It’s also worth noting that two players often linked to the Leafs – Brandon Monteur and Nick Jensen – were already traded.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have lots of options. If they need to add, they can clear cap space by moving Brown, Hainsey, Zaitsev or Horton. They have several valuable trade chips, if they want to use them.
Most are predicting a quiet deadline for Toronto, but I don’t agree. I think they are on the verge of winning a Cup, and with Marner and Matthews in the last year of their cheap entry-level contracts they’ll never have a better time to go for it.
Since they’ll never have a better chance, logic dictates they’ll improve their roster tomorrow.