A seemingly isolated incident could have been the cause of a potentially botched trade opportunity between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Anaheim Ducks.
For a while, there was talk that Morgan Rielly was adamant about joining a West Coast club. The rumors floated the San Jose Sharks as a plausible destination. That changed when the Sharks acquired Darnell Nurse from the Edmonton Oilers and then signed Jacob Trouba in free agency.
So, the next club to generate speculation was Anaheim. For a while, it seemed like the Ducks were the team that was most interested in the longest-tenured Maple Leafs player.
But then, the Leo Carlsson offer sheet hit. And that changed the entire outlook in Anaheim.
The Ducks were suddenly stuck with an enormous cap hit, then had to scramble to sign Pavel Mintyukov amid more offer sheet speculation.
In a matter of weeks, the Ducks went from being flush with cap space to a massive crunch. That situation also meant that some veteran players could have landed on the trade block.
Meanwhile, the Rielly remains in Toronto.
That’s why it’s fair to speculate that, if the Carlsson offer sheet hadn’t happened the way it did, Rielly and the Ducks might have worked something out.
What would Rielly-to-Ducks trade have looked like for Maple Leafs?
The biggest question in this what-if discussion is what the purported trade between the Leafs and Ducks would have looked like.
If anything, the comparable there would be the Nurse trade. The Oilers got a washed-up prospect and an AHL-level player for Nurse and his entire cap hit.
Since it’s the cap hit, and not necessarily Rielly the Leafs are looking to get rid of, would something like a lower-tier prospect and something like a fourth-round pick have made sense?
Had such a deal been the eventual outcome, Maple Leafs fans would have been enraged. There’s a perception that the Leafs should get a ton more for Rielly. In fact, the backlash would have been similar to the Brandon Carlo trade. Toronto gave up Fraser Minten and a first-round pick for Carlo. Then, Chayka came back and sold Carlo off for two thirds.
If the two players picked with those selections become stars, well, a wrong would have somehow been righted. But that’s a major if at this point.
Perhaps down the line we’ll see that the Maple Leafs were better off holding on to Rielly. If Jim Hiller’s influence leads to Rielly becoming a much more productive blueliner, the missed deal would look like an averted crisis.
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