No Need To Trade Nylander

Équipe: 2024-25 Maple Leafs de Toronto

Date de création initiale: 27 juill. 2023

Publié: 27 juill. 2023

Mode - plafond salarial: Basique

This board has been overflowing with Willie Nylander trade proposals, all of them slightly more unbelievable and terrible than the last. Everyone seems to justify it by saying "well the Leafs can't afford him!!!!"

Here's the thing: they very easily can.

First, sign Matthews. Duh. Rumors have him looking for 4 or 5 years at $13.5M so he can get another bite at free agency with a $100M cap. Fine. Take it. He's worth it.

Nylander has been rumored to be looking for a $9-10M AAV. Split the difference, give him 8x$9.5M. Done.

You -still- have $21M left to fill out the rest of the team after paying those two guys. So let's bring back Ilya Samsonov at 4x$4.5M. We can pretend Tyler Bertuzzi is gonna love the Leafs, and he sticks around for 4x$6M. Timothy Liljegren takes the leap and gets the Noah Dobson RFA bridge deal at $4M AAV. There's STILL $6.5M left.

Now it's just filling in at the edges. Keep Sam Lafferty around and build a shutdown 3rd line with Jarnkrok - Kampf - Lafferty. Hope that Nick Robertson has fully healed and run a kid line of Robertson - Holmberg - Hirvonen to start integrating some young guys on cheap deals into the forward group.

After that, all you need is some D depth. Picked a pair of guys that complemented their partners (Ghost brings offense to a pair with McCabe; Kulikov brings veteran presence to a pair with rookie Niemela) but I'm sure there are other Toronto-area players I'm forgetting that would be willing to come home on a sweetheart deal.

23 man roster. All the big names retained. With cap to spare.

The Leafs don't need to give Willie Nylander away.