During his quarterly media availability on Tuesday, Brad Treliving alluded to the types of trades the Toronto Maple Leafs would be looking at. This notion was previously floated by NHL insiders Elliotte Friedman and Darren Dreger as well, and is focused around the Maple Leafs making “hockey trades” of players on their roster for a player on another team’s roster. Pure hockey trades is a bit of rarity in the NHL but at least in theory, with the rising salary cap taking the challenge out of re-signing free agents, there is the potential to see more of this. For now the read on ‘roster-for-roster trades’ is simply scraps for scraps.
The Leafs have a lot of those players, but finding other players who could use a fresh start that could benefit the tea is the challenge.
From the Leafs perspective, the fresh start seekers start with:
- Max Domi, a streaky offensive option that could fit on a team short on centre depth and in the need of a playmaker a middle six option. He’d work well with an offence first coach who believes that the team can outscore defensive gaps
- Brandon Carlo, a strong stay-at-home complimentary option to a star left shot defenceman. Rielly is too much of a defensive liability for Carlo to cover off the level of talent the duo is expected to face, but with a two-way defensive partner, Carlo would potentially look better and be an important penalty killer as well.
Beyond that duo, Bobby McMann, Calle Jarnkrok, Nicolas Roy, Scott Laughton, Dakota Joshua, Simon Benoit, and Oliver Ekman-Larsson are players the Maple Leafs should be testing the waters on. Given the Maple Leafs’ struggles, giving up on youthful players on their roster like Maccelli and Robertson seems ill-advised, and the rest of the Leafs group either carries a no movement clause or the Maple Leafs should be reluctant to move on from them.
When it comes to what the Leafs need to be looking for at this point, there is a lot they can be open to and a big part of what is needed at this point is addition by subtraction. Freeing the Leafs of multiyear commitments to Domi, Joshua, and Ekman-Larsson would be ways to shed future roster challenges.
Finding youth and speed in the trade market, at any position should be the priority and youth (especially on defence) will probably be the biggest challenge for the Leafs to find. Beyond that, players that can quickly move the puck, two-way forwards, as well as significant defensive upgrades are the priority.
Players like Brennan Othmann and Yegor Chinakhov, who are on The Athletic’s trade board, would make interesting youthful targets for the Maple Leafs, while Alex Tuch, Mario Ferraro, and Jordan Kyrou are seemingly more expensive options but are capable of addressing both an immediate and future need.
In addition to Othmann and Chinakhov, Brad Lambert of the Winnipeg Jets is seeking a new opportunity and both his price and skill set shouldn’t be lost on the Maple Leafs.
The curious option on that trade list might be Steven Stamkos, who depending on how motivated the Predators are to move his salary could be a buy low target that doesn’t so much address the need for speed, two-way play, or youth, but has an interesting high risk/high reward element to him. The catch here being that the Predators, like a lot of the teams with players listed on the trade board are a lot more motivated to acquire futures than roster players.
The trade market seems as limited as ever and the reality of the Leafs results so far clearly make it so that giving up futures would be a bad idea as well as being a team that isn’t just one player away from being a contender. At the same time, the past summer demonstrated that improving the team via trades and free agency in the offseason isn’t as easy as it used to be.
Looking for potential right fits and casting off the bad fits needs to be more of an around the year endeavor and if roster player for roster player deals aren’t viable, dealing a roster player for futures and using those futures to acquire a roster player make sense. The Rangers did this well last season and should be the blueprint for Brad Treliving this year. Toronto has depth at their disposal, maybe not top of the roster depth, but depth. Using it in the interim while considering multiple transactions seems like the smarter play rather than seeking a perfect player for player fit.
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