Équipe: 2023-24 Maple Leafs de Toronto

Date de création initiale: 17 mai 2023

Publié: 30 mai 2023

Mode - plafond salarial: Basique

... Matthews says he wants out, otherwise you stay the course.

After Sundin left, the conversation was always around not having that 1C and where to find him. I've been rewatching the Bulls Last Dance doc recently, it took Jordan and the Bulls 7yrs before their first championship; some recent 1C ... Lemieux 7yrs before his first cup, Sakic 8, MacKinnon 9, Yzerman 13, McDavid TBD (min 9). Yzerman is also a great comparable in terms of playoff GP. Detroit's first 11 yrs with Yzerman, twice they played >7 playoff games, twice they didn't make playoffs, and the other 7 years they played 7 games or less. You do not trade Matthews unless he wants to go!

After that ...

The Core:
Tavares has a NMC and it's a bad look of asking him to waive when there was such a big deal of the hometown kid coming back. Just resigned Mo last year with a NMC, he has showed he can be a playoff gamer, and you don't have another top pair D man pushing him out. Which leaves us with Marner/Nylander. I can't say which of the two has to fall on the sword as they both have their own pros and cons, so it comes down to the return package - but you don't sell for the sake of selling. If the return isn't there you don't. I looked at scenarios around both and I don't see a way the Leafs win those deals or if they do it doesn't make sense from the other teams side. I decided to keep them both as own rentals and re-evaluate at the TDL or next summer.

One small trade to give Robertson a fresh start and the Leafs pickup a young physical winger. Didn't pay much attention to the pick in the deal.

Moved on from most of the Leafs UFAs, other then Schenn and Acciari. Drouin gets a one year deal, a little below value, but gets to play with Matthews and Marner - a chance to run up his stats to get paid somewhere else the following year. Finally, went with Graves to fill out the D. Was really looking at Barbashev for a similar cap hit but felt the D needed more help then the fwd group.

Job one here though is getting the Matthews deal done.