Toronto Maple Leafs: The Idea of Trading Nylander or Marner Is Ridiculous and Wrong

The Toronto Maple Leafs lost to the Columbus Blue Jackets, in a five game series in which they deserved, but did not get, the win.

Coming into the series, the Toronto Maple Leafs weaknesses were said to be heart, determination, physicality, leadership, defense, special teams and goaltending.

They destroyed 100% of those narratives by playing with heart and determination, by not being physically dominated in any way, they showed great leadership, their PK was perfect, their PP was robbed blind but created a ton of chances and despite pristine goaltending and defensive numbers, they still lost.

Despite losing due to their biggest strength, while overcoming all of their perceived weaknesses, there was Brian Burke on the post game show telling us he was right all along.  Weird, since he was 100% wrong in everything but the result.

And then, who could have predicted that the Toronto Sun would trot out the old Trade Nylander chestnut? What’s that? Everyone?

Jeez.

Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Stay the Course

It’s not like hockey is a poorly designed game where one player – the goalie – has an outsized influence on the outcome or anything, so if you don’t get the results you want, blow it up. (note the sarcasm!).

Except, you know, that the #1 problem every team in every sport has is that they chase results and make desperation moves based on recent, and often non-representative, results.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have an excellent team on the verge of winning.  They’ve got salary cap flexibility (because their third line makes $11 million and can be easily moved) and they’ve got at least two potential star players set to enter the lineup on cheap team-friendly deals.

Making massive changes due to getting bad results in a random, five game series after a five month layoff would be going against everything the team with the biggest and most expensive analytics department in the league stands for.

The most ironic thing you can do is tell someone who understands probabilities that the loss proves analytics don’t work.  It proves nothing of the sort.  Someone has to win the lottery, but it doesn’t improve your odds any to know that.

The Leafs lost a five game series in which they shot 2% at even strength.  If you have any idea of how unlikely this actually is, then I don’t think you can get mad about the result. The 31st ranked team in the NHL by shooting percentage this year was Detroit with over 3x the success the offensively stacked Leafs had in their five game series.

Every off-season requires tweaks, but you don’t make major moves based on random flukes.

The Blue Jackets had to play the Leafs five times to win three games, even though they had two goalies each go on 50+ save streaks and then added another shut-out.

“The Leafs can’t win in the playoffs” narrative embarrasses me, because we should be so far beyond the basic level of this analysis – we are, after all, the centre of the hockey universe.   We should know better.

Mitch Marner is going nowhere.  You just tell me the last time an NHL team traded a 23 year old 90 point player and won the trade, and maybe I will reconsider, but its never happened before and it isn’t going to happen now.

As for Nylander, well, this is a family site so I can’t really tell you what I truly think of such an idea.  But suffice to say that if your team has limited cap space, trading away your best and most valuable contract is probably not a good idea.

In fact, it is a certifiably bad idea.

The Leafs have a good team, maybe even a great one.  If you think you can use the results so far to confirm what you always thought, you aren’t being intellectually honest because that is not how logic works.  It’s how emotions work, but not logic.

The only way to guarantee success in the NHL is to come up with a plan, stick to it, and ice a contender every year.  Eventually you will win.  It took Washington a decade, but they did it.

If you look at the Cup winners of the last 13 years, St. Louis is the exception.  They are the only team that came out of nowhere to win.  During the 12 years before that the Bruins, Kings, Hawks, Caps and Penguins won every single Cup.

Each of those teams put together a team that competed for years and years.  They are “legacy” teams who built a team with a plan, stuck to it and eventually won.   This is the model the Leafs need to follow.

Trading William Nylander is a non-starter, it’s never happening.  Trading Marner is even more loony.

Stay. The. Course