The Toronto Maple Leafs and 30 other NHL teams just watched an amazing performance at the World Junior Tournament.
Normally when there aren’t any Toronto Maple Leafs on Team Canada, we lost a bit of interest in the tournament, but not this year.
Connor Bedard scored nine times in seven games and added 14 assists and basically made an entire country drop their jaws. The fact that in four months he improved that much over his four goal eight point tournament this past August is something to behold.
He is going to be the best player to join the NHL since Matthews and McDavid. He could be even better than those guys – who knows?
And the NHL will decide where goes via lottery, and Montreal could possibly get two shots. The most a team can move up is ten spots, so only the 11 worst teams have a shot at Bedard.
This should prevent borderline playoff teams from throwing in the towel, but it also might not – it could lead to the craziest trade deadline ever.
Toronto Maple Leafs and the NHL’s Craziest Trade Deadline
The current NHL standings would see Florida as the best team to get a lottery chance. They have 40 points, but they are also only three wins out of a Wild Card spot. They really don’t want to look like idiots, so they will probably have incentive to overpay to make their team better, and clearly the sooner the better.
But what about mid-range teams like Buffalo? Pittsburgh seems to have a deal whereby they get every second generational player who enters the league, and they are only four points out of 11th. Edmonton is only 5.
You see how this could get crazy.
There is just basically no difference between the 11th worst team and the Wild Card teams.
So theoretically, there are decent, playoff bound teams who could throw in the towel.
Then there are the teams who already stink who will increase their odds with every loss. It behooves them to get worse as soon as possible.
If you’re the Leafs, you could probably get a nice discount on Terry and Klingberg if you acted sooner than later. The Ducks are in 3rd last, but they could be so much worse.
That’s just an example. If I was the Leafs, I’d be thinking bigger.
Timo Meier is a pending UFA and the Sharks are in the same position as the Ducks. If you make the move sooner than later, they’d probably take less, because the sooner they become a worse team, the better their odds.
They retain half, and take Kerfoot and he fits in the cap no problems.
If you could get Erik Karlsson double-retained, you could fit him in by trading Brodie. The Toronto Maple Leafs have slowly and methodically built a contender, but now is the time to pay the price to turn that contender into a winner by making all-star quality upgrades.
The Leafs are already a great team, but if they were to add not one, but two of the best players in the world? It would fun even if they lost, so there’s nothing to lose.
And even if they don’t have the stomach for that, we should definitely see some fireworks because everyone wants to tank and players like Meir, Karlsson, Horvat are not usually available. Things could get really fun!
Bottom line: The Leafs need to add and they know that bad teams have real motivation to sell their current stars as soon as possible. That should create a very nice buyer-friendly market and I can’t wait to see what happens.