Toronto Maple Leafs: 3 Trade Destinations for William Nylander
On Chris Johnston’s recent podcast he stated that things are not going well in the contract negotiations between the Toronto Maple Leafs and William Nylander.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are said to want an eight-year deal in the mid $8 Million range, while Nylander believes he is in the $10+ Million area.
In a recent article, I looked at what the 40-goal scorer’s fair contract should look like and it appears as the club is closer to the fair value number than the player is. A couple fair comparable contracts were that of Mika Zibanejad and Dylan Larkin.
When comparing the contracts most people look at the dollar contract, but it should be the percentage of the cap that was taken. If you do the cap percentage, Nylander should come in on an eight-year deal around $8.8 Million, so the Toronto Maple Leafs could cave a little to winger and give him $9.2 Million.
The talk about $10+ Million may just be posturing by Nylander to bring the deal into the mid $9M range, however if he truly believes that is what his contract should be, it may be time to move on from him.
The former eighth overall selection is coming off a career season that saw him register 40-goals for the first time in his career and reached 87-points. The big question is whether this is his peak or him just unleashing what could be several years of high caliber goal scoring.
Nylander always gets his value compared to teammate Mitch Marner and some feel he is worth more than the Selke Trophy finalist.
It feels not long ago that the Toronto Maple Leafs and Nylander went right down to the wire where the player almost missed an entire season of hockey in a hold out for his current contract.
This time around, the organization can’t go down the same route and I’d argue that the club can’t leave the summer with Nylander on the team and not signed to an extension.
If the two sides can’t come to a new contract that locks down the forward long term, GM Brad Treliving has to look at moving on from the long time Maple Leaf.
Here is a look at three possible locations for Nylander to end up and in each case he would be signing an extension with the new team as part of the trade.