Toronto Maple Leafs Seem Extremely Likely to Trade for Noah Hanifin
The Toronto Maple Leafs are extremely likely to trade for Calgary Flames defenseman Noah Hanifin.
During the Toronto Maple Leafs / Anaheim Might Ducks game on Saturday night, Elliote Friedmen reported that Hanifin was likely to be trade and that he won't re-sign in Calgary.
The Leafs GM has long been rumoured to have interest in taking players from his old team, and a rumour about the Leafs getting both Tavev and Hanifin has been hovering on the line between a possibilty and wishful thinking for a while now.
With those two additions, Reilly, McCabe, Liljegren and Benoit, the Leafs blue-line would be a lot better than it looked at any time since Jake Muzzin retired.
Toronto Maple Leafs Seem Extremely Likely to Trade for Noah Hanifin
Patching the blue-line didn't seem possible at all earlier, but McCabe really improved since he came back from injury, while Liljegren and Benoit have both taken major steps in their development.
Hanifn is one of three additions the Leafs need to make if they want to win the Stanley Cup this year (or, realistically, at least give themselves a good chance to do it). If he is available, and he seems to be, the Leafs are known to be interested and have the biggest need on the blue-line of any contender.
There's no guarantee it happens, but it seems like a big possibility.
Here are the other two addiitons the Leafs need to make for the playoffs.
Casey Mittlestadt
Despite how hard it would be to learn how to spell his name, the Maple Leafs should be heavily pursuing the Buffalo Sabres centre.
Once again, the Sabres are going to miss the playoffs, and once again, they will be looking to the future in order to hopefully one day not be a complete atrocity of a hockey team.
Until then, their best players will continue to show up in trade rumours for other teams.
Mittlestadt is 25 and a former 8th overall pick.
He's having his best season to date, and has 44 points in 54 games. He is offensively gifted and defensively competant.
There is no way a player like this should be available, and I don't even know that he is, but the Sabres are a bad team and poorly run. They probably do want to keep Mittlestadt, but it's worth finding out what he'd cost.
He only makes $2.5 million and is a pending RFA. He would be a massive upgrade over Max Domi at 3C and basically give the Leafs the coveted 3 x #1 centre setup that is almost impossible to defend.
They haven't been the same since losing Ryan O'Reilly and though this a different type of player, the theory is the same - have three star centres and watch other teams scramble to defend.
I would love to see a situation where the Leafs add a solid 3C and move Domi to 4C and play him with McMann and Steeves on an offenive oriented fourth line.
The Leafs top priortity should be a goalie, and secondy they should be going for a defenseman, but I would still like to see them add another centre.
A Goalie
The Leafs are rumored to be in on Hannifin, and they are definitely going to want to upgrade their 3C position, but more than anything they need a goalie.
Not one person in their right mind wants Martin Jones or Ilya Samsonov even backing up a playoff game. Joseph Woll is injured, and inexperienced, and injury prone, and cannot be relied upon to be the starting goalie in one of Auston Matthews' Prime Seasons.
That makes an upgrade all but inevitable, and as I've mentioned a few times, there are four impact goalies who may or may not be available.
Juuse Saros is the next best thing to trading for a prime Andrei Vasilevskiy and the potential of pairing Auston Matthews with one of the best goalie alive cannot be overlooked. The Leafs should be willing to move almost anything to make this happen.
It would likely cost Matthew Knies and I'd do that in a second.
Cheaper and potentially just as great upgrades include Jacob Markstrom, a current Vezina front-runner, John Gibson a younger-than-you-think potentially franchise altering acquisition, and the former Cup winner Jordan Binnington.
All four would be a massive upgrade to the Leafs Stanley Cup chances. All four would make me forget how bad Brad Treliving has done to date as the Leafs GM.
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Hanifn would be great, but the Leafs top priortity needs to be in net.