How the Toronto Maple Leafs Can Fix Cap and Blue-Line with 1 Trade

The Toronto Maple Leafs have a bit of a problem.

Not only is the Toronto Maple Leafs blue-line easily the worst out of any team that considers themselves a contender, but they are still in cap trouble.

The Leafs are still almost $3 million dollars over the NHL’s salary cap, according to Capfriendly.com.

And sure, they could get under the cap by manipulating their roster, sending players down, playing shorthanded etc., but why would they want to?

The NHL season is long, and teams without roster flexibility tend to get into trouble.

Besides, that, the Leafs blue-line is not physical enough, or good enough.

I have a trade proposal that fixes both these problems.

How the Toronto Maple Leafs Can Fix Cap and Blue-Line with 1 Trade

The Leafs blue-line figures to look like this on opening night:

Rielly-Brodie 

McCabe – Liljegren

Giordano/Timmins – Klingberg. 

That top pairing isn’t elite, the second line might be great but the coach clearly doesn’t trust Liljegren (sitting him in each of the past two playoffs despite great stats) and the third pairing is just awful.

Giordano should already have retired and Klingberg is one of the worst defensive players in the NHL, if not the absolute worst.

A rookie could conceivably push Giordano out of the lineup, but given Brodie’s most recent games and the overall lack of physicality, this blue-line stinks. 

To fix it, the Toronto Maple Leafs should trade with new GM Brad Treliving’s former team.

Going to Calgary would be Calle Jarnkrok, Sam Lafferty and T.J Brodie. 

Coming back to the Leafs would be Chris Tanev.

In order to make this work, a third team would need to retain some salary, but let’s leave that for the teams to work out themselves.

Before any retention, the Leafs would clear $3.7 million with this trade.  That makes them cap-compliant, but also it makes their blue-line way better.

Tanev is a physical player who instantly makes the Leafs a better team.

He is 33 and in the last year of a $4.5 million contract.  He led the NHL last year in 5v5 xGoals percentage by a defenseman.  He is an elite defensive player and he is, in reality, what fans of Luke Schenn think Luke Schenn is.

We’ve seen Rielly excel with this type of player, just not one this good.  The Leafs instantly get better defensively and more physical.  They save cap money and their team is better.

Lafferty and Jarnkrok can be replaced by Nick Robertson and whoever makes the team out of camp – they are no real loss.

Now, obviously, this is just an idea, not a rumour.  However, the Toronto Maple Leafs clearly need to do something before the season starts, and to my mind, this would go a long way in solving both their two major problems.