The Top 4 Toronto Maple Leafs Goalie Trade Options
By James Tanner
The Top Option
Jusse Saros
Jusse Saros is the top available goalie that the Leafs could concievably trade for.
The Nashville Predators have one of the top goalie prospects in the NHL, Yaroslav Askarov and Saros is 29 and on an expiring contract.
That contract has a cheap $5 million cap-hit, but comes with the expectation of a $10 million-ish extention at the end of next season.
If the Leafs were to trade for Saros, the idea would be to extend him with the money that comes off the books next season when John Tavares contract expires.
For one season, the Leafs would have a Woll/Saros combo for a very cheap $6 million cap-hit.
The reason to trade for Saros is that goalies in the NHL are extremely unpredictable from year to year, and therefore anyone who can spend several years as one of the best goalies in the league becomes an extremely rare commodity.
In the NHL, the best goalies right now are Connor Hellebuyck and Andrei Vasilevskiy. Neither is available to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
After that, the list gets subjective, but Ilya Sorokin, Igor Shesterkin, Joel Oettinger and Jusse Saros are the four players in teir 2.
After that, things get pretty blurry, but you've got Jacob Markstrom, Thatcher Demko, Jordan Binnington, John Gibson, Fred Andersen and then Jeremy Swayman and Linus Ullmark (though they are a tandem pair and who knows what you'd get with just one of them).
Jusse Saros is the closest thing the Leafs can get to a top goalie and should be their top priority.