Quoting: aadoyle
Pittsburgh doesnt have the cap space nor anything Carolina would want plus divisional rivalry
Meanwhile Toronto has something Carolina wants WN, SEA has cap space and some nice forwards (Bjorkstrand, Burakovsky, Eberle, etc), and NSH seems to be in no mans land where they are adding and subtracting
A trade involving Pesce and Nylander seems to make sense. Both teams are in win-now mode, so trading for a player who can become a UFA shouldn’t bother them as long as it makes the team better now. However, making it work could be complicated, for a couple of reasons:
1) Toronto would want more than just Pesce for Nylander, but they can’t afford to take on more cap hit. Carolina doesn’t have a lot of cap flexibility either, so the cap hit would have to come out even or slightly in favor of Toronto.
2) Nylander supposedly wants $10M/yr on an extension, which I don’t think Carolina will pay, so they’d be looking at him strictly as a 1-year rental. That means they’re not going to want to give up a pending RFA like Jarvis. They could give up a draft pick or prospect, but that isn’t going to help Toronto now. I think it has to be strictly rentals for rentals.
3) Toronto is top-heavy on forward, but not deep, so they probably would like to get back a forward who could fill a roster spot, but Carolina would likely have no interest in taking back a defenseman unless it’s a 7th or 8th guy just to make the cap hit work.
The only deal I can think of that addresses all these would be Nylander and Timmins for Pesce and Teravainen with Carolina retaining somewhere between $1.5M and $2M salary on one of the players. I feel like Toronto should be throwing in some draft capital too, like their 2024 1st-round pick (protected if Toronto misses the playoffs) for Philadelphia’s 2nd, but it might still work for Carolina if they don't, just because they have so much depth on defense and it's probably the only way they could turn that depth into a guy who could have as much impact as Nylander without giving up future assets.