Maple Leafs: Day Ends In “Y” and Another Nylander Rumour Surfaces

Rumours about the Toronto Maple Leafs and William Nylander are never in short supply.

According to HockeyBuzz.com, the Philadelphia Flyers are working hard with the Toronto Maple Leafs to acquire William Nylander. Like every rumor involving Nylander, we know its almost certainly not true because the Leafs have repeatedly said they won’t trade him.

In Leafs-Land the “Trade Nylander” narrative is the equivalent of kicking a dead horse.  The 24-year-old winger always seems to be on the hypothetical trade-block, because people just do not want to accept that the Leafs were perfectly able to build a deep, competitive team while allocating so much of their money to skilled forwards.  It’s fine if you don’t believe it will work, but what logic would there be for the Leafs to pull back after pulling it off?

Nylander’s deal  looks like a bargain, and he just scored 31 goals, put up some of the best transition and possession stats in the NHL, and was unlucky in his ability to rack up assists, or he would have scored about a point per game.

The Flyers are currently paying Kevin Hayes ($7.14M) and James van Riemsdyk ($7M) and neither player is anywhere close to as good, or as young, as Nylander.  Those two contracts  should make Leafs fans pretty happy about themselves. Both of those players may score 20-30 goals per season, but they’re veterans and are on the decline of their careers, unlike Nylander.

William Nylander Rumored to Philadelphia

Within Eklund’s HockeyBuzz.com article, he discusses the fact that Philadelphia Flyers G.M. Chuck Fletcher has always adored Nylander, and would like to acquire him. The Philadelphia Flyers have some great offensive pieces, but the addition of Nylander would really make them impressive.  The Leafs are supposed to be after Travis Sanheim in this deal.

For those of you who don’t know much about Sanheim, he has one year left on his contract at $3.25M, before becoming a Restricted Free Agent. He’s a 24-year-old left-handed defenseman and has improved drastically every season in the NHL. After putting on 50 pounds last off-season, he’s getting bigger and better and according to Walt Gebelein of Broad Street Buzz is turning into arguably the second-best defenseman of the 2014 NHL Draft Class.

Then again, a more advanced stats based approach shows that he’s an excellent offensive defenseman with suspect defensive skills.  He shoots left handed and will need a new contract next year. He is older than Nylander, and signed for less time. And the Leafs also have four defenseman on their roster who put up better stats than Sanheim last season, as well as Mikko Lehtonen and Rasmus Sundin (both of whom are left as well) on the horizon.

This is just another in the never ending, never happening Nylander trade rumour saga. Even if the Leafs did trade him, which they have shown absolutely no signs of doing, or even thinking about, they certainly wouldn’t be acquiring Travis Sanheim who is the kind of player they already have too many of.  If the rumour was for Colton Paryko or Aaron Ekblad, it might make sense for the Leafs do be involved.

Also, Kyle Dubas probably still thinks that the core of those four players gives the Toronto Maple Leafs the best possible chance at winning a Stanley Cup right now.

We’ve seen crazier things happen in the NHL, but still, Kyle Dubas doing a 180 and making a bad trade for a player he doesn’t need seems pretty unlikely.