The idea of Matthew Knies is an extremely hot topic. After the reported agreed trade with the Montreal Canadiens at the deadline just months ago -- before the Toronto Maple Leafs fired Brad Treliving as general manager -- now the do-or-don't debate between moving arguably Toronto's best asset, is being discussed all across Leafs Nation.
And now, people are throwing out trade ideas left, right, and center.
Trade would set the Leafs back even further
Knies is clearly a highly sought-after forward, since he is just 23 years old and is locked up for five more seasons at an extremely reasonable $7.75-million AAV. But should he just be used to solve some other problems on the Leafs roster?
On TSN Overdrive earlier this week, NHL analyst Mike Johnson joined the show and in a conversation about Morgan Rielly's future and potentially adding an offensive creator like Dougie Hamilton to the blue line, a Knies trade was thrown out there.
Matthew Knies for Dougie Hamilton and Simon Nemec? 🤔@mike_p_johnson brings up a hypothetical deal between Toronto and New Jersey pic.twitter.com/wP83jszarm
— OverDrive (@OverDrive1050) June 2, 2026
That is just wild and wacky. And to be fair, this is from a show before the Knies-to-Montreal trade was actually fully reported on, so this conversation is just going off of the 23-year-old's name being vaguely out there in some trade rumors.
But still, what does that even solve? Even if the Leafs fully believe Simon Nemec can be a top-four defenseman that maybe even scores upwards of 65 points a season, getting him alongside Hamilton (who wants out of New Jersey anyways) for Knies, feels like a lopsided deal that the Leafs would be clowned on for eternity if they made that.
Nemec is just a year younger than Knies, so it is essentially a swap of two young players and then throwing in a quasi cap dump that still holds a little bit of positive value. But Hamilton does not make up for anywhere close to the difference in player between Nemec and Knies.
Knies has already proven that at the very least, he's a solid top-six winger that can get extremely physical, drop the gloves, and score upwards of 25 goals. Teams kill for that type of player. And for him to be locked up for the next five seasons at a reasonable cap hit, only makes the price go up.
To get a little reclamation project in Nemec and then Hamilton, would be a complete disaster.
Sure, it would bring some much-needed offense to the Leafs' blue line and could solve that problem, but then the Leafs are left in a familiar problem of not having enough scoring depth up front. It's giving up a big piece of your future to then potentially solve a temporary hole.
This is for sure not happening and at all, so we don't have to get too upset about it but that's just a wild trade to throw out there. We still love Mike Johnson though.
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