Trading William Nylander to Get Cap Compliant Is Ridiculous

The Toronto Maple Leafs need to get cap compliment, but trading William Nylander to do so would be ridiculous.

In the history of Toronto Maple Leafs blunders, being forced to trade William Nylander because you spent $17 million dollars on worse players would be the very worst.

Worse than trading Tukka Rask.

Worse than firing Kyle Dubas.

Worse than trading Russ Courtnall for an enforcer.

Worse than mortgaging a hall of fame goalie to re-acquire the husk of Wendel Clark.

Trading William Nylander to Get Cap Compliment Is Ridiculous

Being forced to trade T.J Brodie to get under the salary cap because you signed John Klingberg for just one million less than Brodie (who is a massively superior player) is bad.

But choosing Nylander instead would be lunacy.

As established by the underwhelming return the Ottawa Senators received for Alex DeBrincat, the Toronto Maple Leafs won’t get enough for William Nylander to make trading him worthwhile.

Potentially, if you could get a potential #1 defenseman like Mortiz Seider or Bowan Byram for Nylander, it would probably help the team, but not the salary cap.

If you could trade Nylander to the Ducks for Adam Fantilli, or a similar team with a similar top prospect, you could then put a potential superstar into the lineup for the league minimum, it might make sense.

But neither of those options is likely.  Anyone as good as Nylander costs $$$$ and any superstar-level rookie likely wouldn’t be traded for a guy approaching 30.

The Leafs would be better to let Nylander walk for nothing than trade him for a bad package and make their team worse this year.  He’s better than anything you’d pay for at the trade deadline, so if he won’t sign they just have to suck it up and use him while he’s here.

That obviously isn’t ideal, but the worst case scenario is trading him for a bad package, while letting him walk in free-agency is only the second worst one.

Of course, the Leafs wouldn’t be in this situation if they didn’t sign $17 million dollars of worse players before taking care of their necessary business.

The intelligent thing to do would have been to sign Nylander, Matthews and Samsonov before wading into the free-agent market at all.

There is a very real danger that the Leafs are going to lose players who are better than anyone they signed in order to become cap compliant.

This is an embarrassing situation to be in,  but it could be solved by sending Murray, Brodie and Jarnkrok to San Jose for Erik Karlsson.

These players cover Karlsson’s salary, and the Leafs could pay additional assets to get San Jose to retain enough of Karlsson’s contract to make them cap compliant right now.

While that is unlikely to happen, the only thing we know is that the Toronto Maple Leafs can’t trade William Nylander in order to get under the salary cap because it would be the worst move in the history of the franchise.