You might have heard this already, but the Toronto Maple Leafs need a third-line centre.
It's kind of been THE MAIN THING that all Toronto Maple Leafs discourse has been discussing for the last few months, but I think that's weird because in my opinion, the Leafs would be much better served going after a defenseman.
The Leafs have been linked to Scott Laughton, Brayden Schenn and Yanni Gourde. I think that, for various reasons, they are all bad ideas. The Leafs already have their third line centre, actually.
There is no need to trade for a centre, because the Leafs have Fraser Minten.
The Toronto Maple Leafs Already Have Their 3rd Line Centre - No Trade Needed
In the NHL, there are star players and there are everyone else. Because of the salary cap the value of non-star players is extremely low.
Basically there are three types of players 1) stars 2) non-stars who were rewarded for their previous good play with contracts larger than the league minimum and 3) players making the league minimum for whatever reason.
On average, the players in the second group (non-stars with contracts) have much lower value than all other players because they aren't quite stars but the difference between them and a random AHL Call-Up is rarely worth the difference in their salaries.
The Leafs could add Ryan O'Reilly, Scott Laughton, Yanni Gourde or Brayden Schenn. Not one of them is a star at this point. They are all - every single one of them - overpaid for what they bring at this point of their careers.
Yes, all of them are better than Fraser Minten is today, but not by much. And definitely not by as much as their respective salaries, and especially if you started to play Minten with a star player on his line.
If the Leafs simply decided to be smart and split up their three franchise players into three different lines, they wouldn't need to trade for a forward at all (they still could, but there wouldn't have to).
Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner can each take another two non star players and elevate their games. When you put them together, however, they only elevate a single player, meanwhile they don't make each other much better because they are already stars and there is the Law of Diminishing Returns to worry about.
By splitting up Marner and Matthews, and then using Nylander on an entirely separate line, the Leafs stretch their lineup and become so much harder to play against than they are now. In this new set-up, Matthews can pair with Knies, Marner can pair with Tavares and Nylander can pair with Minten.
The Leafs would then be just as good as if Scott Laughton joined the team, but they'd be doing it for free, leaving them to use their assets on a defensman. Then, if they wanted to upgrade their forwards they could do so on the cheap with Brandon Tanev and Mark Jankowski.
No need for O'Reilly, Laughton, Schenn or Gourde because the Maple Leafs already have Fraser Minten. The slight upgrade isn't worth the cost, especially when that upgrade can come from better lineup distribution of the players they already have.