Toronto Maple Leafs: Latest William Nylander Rumour Is Unbelievable

The Toronto Maple Leafs are almost certainly not going to trade William Nylander.

This is based on my assumption that current Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving is fairly smart, and that the Leafs wouldn’t hire someone who was really dumb to be their GM.

Now, I can’t defend spending $11 million dollars of precious cap space on Max Domi, Ryan Reaves, John Klingberg and David Kampf, but I don’t think he would have landed this job if he wasn’t at least somewhat smart.

And no one who can say that would trade William Nylander when his team is in cap trouble and he (Nylander) has the best current contract on the team (as far as value per dollar goes).

It just wouldn’t make sense.

Furthermore, it wouldn’t make sense to trade Nyander in a market where the younger Alex DeBrincat, whose career high in goals is higher than Nylander’s, was just traded for such a disappointing package.

And even furthermore, we can take it to the bank that the rumoured trade is not something that the Toronto Maple Leafs, or anyone else on earth, would actually consider.

Latest William Nylander Trade Hilariously Awful for Leafs

The latest in a long line of absolutely ridiculous William Nylander trade rumours is that the Toronto Maple Leafs will send him to the Islanders and that Pierre Pageau is involved. (From hockeybuzz.com). 

Pageau is 30, makes $5 million per year, is signed for three more seasons, and has two seasons with a positive xGoals rating in the last eight years.  (Naturalstattrick.com).

In other words, he makes half what Nylander wants, is not a star player, and is overpaid and declining. More significantly, he makes $1.9 less than Nylander currently makes, meaning that if no salary retention was involved, the Leafs would get cap compliant with this trade, and anything else they get would be picks or prospects.

This is a player who hasn’t cracked 41 points since 2016 when he set a career high with 43 points.

The Leafs would be downgrading significantly.  They would be moving a superstar who could potentially score 50 goals for a replacement player.

This would achieve the same thing – cap wise- as waiving Calle Jarnkrok, so I’m not sure why the Leafs would want to trade one of their best players to get worse in a year they figure to be a top Cup Contender.

This is seriously one of the worst, most ridiculous, untenable, non-sensical trade rumours I have ever had the pleasure to discuss.

Why wouldn’t the Leafs just hold Nylander and let him walk away for nothing rather than make this move?  This move makes them worse and offers nothing.

Even if the Islanders included their top prospect (he’s not that good) and a non-lottery protected first, this trade would be garbage.

I am willing to say there is absolutely no possibility that Wililam Nylander gets traded to the New York Islanders. Their cap situation is bad, they don’t have any high-end defenseman to entice the Leafs, and there is no reason for the Leafs to trade William Nylander in the first place.

This is not happening. It’s not even in the realm or possibility.