The Best Case Scenario Off-Season for the Toronto Maple Leafs
By James Tanner
A lot of people always come up to me and say "Jim, your near-physic take on the Zach Hyman contract makes me wish you were the Toronto Maple Leafs General Manager."
And while I always point out that I'm just way too good looking for such a job, I do feel honoured, and take my role as fake Toronto Maple Leafs GM seriously.
So what I did was I cranked up some oldies - mostly the Angels and the Ronnettes - and I got down to business: the business of what I would do if I was the Leafs GM this summer.
It should go without saying that what I would do doubles as a best-case scenario for the Toronto Maple Leafs and not because I'm a genius, but because I get to make all the trades and signings I want and the other team's GM and the player's agents don't get to counter-offer. It's a pretty big advantage!
Here goes nothing:
The Best Case Scenario Off-Season for the Toronto Maple Leafs
Step One: I set this team up for years with a Goalie Trade.
Jusse Saros is one of the NHL's top five or six goalies. He fits nicely into a group with Igor Shesterkin, Joel Oettinger, Ilya Sorokin, Connor Hellebuyck and Andrei Vasilevskiy, and I'm not just talking about how hard it is to spell his name.
He might have an off year or two in the next decade, but he's as close to a "set it and forget it" goalie as you're going to get.
And here is the thing - year to year, goalie predictions are impossible. But they aren't that hard to predict if you just go by overall talent and are comfortable making a long-term bet. This is the Sergei Bobrovsky Rule and it might get changed to a Law.
Nashville has a goalie they'd like to promote rather than pay Saros $10 million per year, which the Leafs will be fine with, since his contrat is cheap this upcoming season but will coincide with the experation of John Tavares' deal a year from now.
Here is how you get a ton of extra value out of your first round pick: The Leafs trade the 2027 UNPROTECTED first round pick to Nashville, along with Topi Niemela and Fraser Minten to the Nashville Predators for Jusse Saros and a (much needed) 2025 second rounder.