The Toronto Maple Leafs are in the news, as they always are, due to the firing of general manager Brad Treliving and fully accepting that they need massive, sweeping changes to the organization. And depending on some decisions they make, one if their elite-level forwards could be looking for a trade.
In an interview with The Athletic, Leafs winger William Nylander really made it clear where he stands with the team and what he wants his future to look like. Unforunately, it all hinges on the Leafs staying down a certain path.
William Nylander could be traded if Leafs start rebuild
Essentially, Nylander said exactly what we all thought, that he would be one of the first players out the door if the Leafs decided to go forward with a more traditional rebuild.
“Unless it was a full rebuild and we were going to get rid of everybody,” Nylander said in the interview, “then it’s a different story. Then you take that conversation then. But just to do a retool or whatever, I don’t even know, but I mean, I still want to be here, yeah.”
He later mentioned a conversation he had with Treliving before he was eventually fired by the Maple Leafs and the direction that the team was going to take.
“Brad said that he doesn’t want to rebuild or anything. He just wants to retool and stuff,” Nylander said. “That sounded fine for me.”
Most of this is obvious. The Leafs going forward with a rebuild but not trading their 29-year-old winger who has elite offensive tools and would fetch them a franchise-changing amount of future assets considering he's locked into a contract for six more seasons after this one, wouldn't make any sense whatsoever. A rebuild -- a more traditional tear-it-all-down one, at that -- would mean trading both Nylander and his captain, Auston Matthews. Those are the pieces that every other team would be wanting and giving up a whole lot for. That's your rebuild.
Now, even without Treliving, the Leafs are most likely going to go forward with a retool by keeping the likes of Matthews, Nylander, Tavares, and most likely Knies. And then changing just about everyone else around them in an attempt to have a Washington Capitals-esque transformation.
In the end, it depends what the new general manager wants to do but most likely, it will be someone who believes this ship can be turned around with the pieces in play.