The Toronto Maple Leafs are going to make some trades this summer. Almost every single NHL team does every single summer so it's not something crazy to think about. But, what could be crazy is who the Leafs move off from their roster and recent rumours have that potentially being Matthew Knies.
Knies's name was reportedly circling around at the trade deadline and now teams are eyeing up, and sniffing around Toronto to see if even with a new general manager, they can pry the 23-year-old power winger away from the Leafs.
Thankfully, that doesn't seem possible anymore.
John Chayka tells all other NHL teams to back off of Matthew Knies
In a recent article by Sportsnet's Luke Fox, where he fielded questions for a mailbag and answered them, he featured a direct quote from the new Maple Leafs general manager about Knies and what Chayka thinks about him and the reports of him potentially being traded last deadline.
“Knies is a really unique player,” Chayka told Fox. “I think his blend of size and skating and skill is really, really hard to find. I’m not aware of what happened at the deadline or what previous regimes thought. I think Mats and I are going to go through and evaluate the roster and make some decisions.”
That certainly doesn't seem like a general manager that is keen to move on from one of his players, or at least will do it so easily if he wasn't getting a piece that will make this team much better.
It might have taken just a couple sentences, but Chayka has now kind of told every other general manager to back off and that Knies is not going to be a player that is regularly in the trade rumour roundups or even talked about in such a way. Even if the Leafs are completely committing to a teardown rebuild and we're saying goodbye to Auston Matthews and William Nylander, Knies is still young enough to then be an effective player when the hypothetical rebuild would be finishing.
Like Chayka said, the package that Knies has with his size, speed, and skill, is so hard to replace and he should certainly be considered more of a cornerstone of this team.
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