Toronto Maple Leafs: 3 Potentially Necessary Trades for Auston Matthews

Edmonton Oilers

To Edmonton: Auston Matthews (35% Retained)

To Toronto: Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Evan Bouchard, 2024 1st Round Pick, 2025 1st Round Pick

I really don’t see this deal happening, I think Matthews has three teams he would play for and that is Toronto, New York or Los Angeles, but who knows and this would be kind of fun.

Matthews would likely only go to Edmonton for one season and then become a free agent, however Edmonton is all-in for the Stanley Cup next season.  I know a good portion of Oilers fans think Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is the third best player in the league behind Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl; and believe they are giving up the best player in the trade.  That is just not the case.

By acquiring Matthews, fans of the NHL get to see more of what they were teased during the last World Cup when the two first overall picks, Matthews and McDavid skated together.

Having the two best players skate together could see Matthews score 80 and McDavid close in on 200-points.

What the Leafs get is a quality center in RNH who makes a cap friendly $5.125M through the 2028-29 season.  The type of money gives you a quality second line center, that can jump up into the first line role.  He collected 104-points last season, but I don’t see that ever happening again and he is more likely to come back down to the 50-60 point range.

Evan Bouchard gives the Toronto Maple Leafs a top four right handed shot defenseman with a bomb from the point.

The Oilers former first round pick has now collected 40-points in back-to-back seasons and broke out during this past playoffs when he collected 17-points in just 12 games.

Signing Matthews is the most important thing and all indications are that he wants to stay in Toronto, but for whatever reason he wants to move on you have to explore a trade.