4 Members of the Toronto Maple Leafs Featured In Trade Rumours

The Toronto Maple Leafs have some injured players returning from long-term injury reserve (LTIR). Changes to their roster will happen before Saturday’s game against the Boston Bruins.

Timothy Liljegren is ready to return to the Toronto Maple Leafs lineup.  He has completed their conditioning stint in the AHL with the Toronto Marlies.

Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas will likely send Filip Kral ($810,000) and Pontus Holmberg ($827,500) back to the AHL. Sending them back down will free up just over $1.6 million in salary cap space.

That is enough space to add Liljegren ($1.4 million) to the roster.

The Leafs have also had Jordie Benn playing a re-hab assignment, and if they feel he should be in the NHL they will likely send Victor Mete down, though they may not want to risk waivers, and Benn is pretty low on the depth chart to start with (Salary cap info from capfriendly.com).

After a bad road trip, the Toronto Maple Leafs played great against the Philadelphia Flyers on Wednesday.  Wednesday’s 5-2 win against the Flyers are how this team needs to play.

With players returning, and others not off to a good start, changes could happen soon on the trade front. According to James Mirtle of the athletic, Toronto has at least four players on their trading block. The players that Mirtle lists are Pierre Engvall, Justin Holl, Alex Kerfoot, and Nicolas Aube-Kubel.

Toronto Maple Leafs Early Season Trading Block

Pierre Engvall

Pierre Engvall played some of the toughest minutes in the NHL last season, while forming one of the best shut-down duos with David Kampf.  His  $2.25 million is high for a depth player on the Leafs, but he seems the least likely to be moved out of this group.  He is much more valuable and effective than most fans seem to credit him for.

Justin Holl

Justin Holl is a right-shot defenseman who has been a decent top-four option on a contending team . Unfortunately for Holl, if the Leafs want to improve their defense, he’s the first guy that will go as a result.  He has a decent cap hit of $2 million, which should make him easier to trade.

Alex Kerfoot

I think the only reason Kerfoot is on this list is because of his $3.5 million contract. It’s a good contract for a player that scored 51 points last season, the vast majority of them at 5v5.

I’m sure GM Kyle Dubas could use the $3.5 million in cap space, but Kerfoot is very versatile. He can play up and down the lineup. Unfortunately, as versatile as he is, he’s expensive and superfluous in the bottom-six, and the team has to break in Nick Robertson.

Nicolas Aube-Kubel

Nicolas Aube-Kubel got signed by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the off-season to help make this team better defensively and add some jump to the bottom six. However, he has not worked out well so far. He has only played in six of Toronto’s 11 games this season and is averaging just nine minutes a game. He has not been effective, but it seems unlikely the team would bail on him so quickly.

One or more of these players will likely be playing for another team by the end of the season. As for which player(s), we will have to wait and see.