Trades & Free Agency Thread: 2024-2025 - Trade Deadline Approaches

[Schennanigans]

Then trade Matthews for MacKinnon.

Mathew’s for Quinn Hughes.

 

[Stephen]

What is the equivalent of that trade in the NHL? That was a wild trade that came out of no where.

Auston Matthews for Leon Draisaitl or something, with a third team brokering details to balance the scales? (Maybe Chicago getting a mid round pick for eating massive cash either way haha).

 

[TMLAM34]

I wonder if Josh Doan could be available for a simple swap with Nick Robertson.

 

[SprDaVE]

I don’t think the leafs have much assets to trade and prefer they stand pat this year.

They trade Cowan and another first, lose in the first round and then marners and Tavares walk. Would be an absolute nightmare and such a leaf thing to happen.

There's always a way to keep adding players even if we fail. McCabe has been one of the best additions to this team and I don't think anyone is crying over a late 1st round pick. The draft is always important but there's a time to draft and there's a time to go for it. That draft pick in 2026 or this years 2nd round pick won't sniff the NHL for 3 years at the minimum. They just need to be smart about it?

But they'll trade a bunch of later picks for rentals and hope for the best I think.

I wonder if Josh Doan could be available for a simple swap with Nick Robertson.

He's waiver exempt for another season I believe. Not sure why they would care to do that unless they think Robertson is far better now and moving forward. So far Robertson has been more productive so not impossible.

I could see a world where they have interest in that but in an expanded deal that includes picks and players exchanged.

 

[LeafChief]

What is the equivalent of that trade in the NHL? That was a wild trade that came out of no where.

Draisaitl for Hedman + 1st in 2029

 

[ULF_55]

Mathew’s for Quinn Hughes.

Yeah, don't think that gets it done.

I was thinking the American Matthews + 25% for the Canadian MacKinnon makes sense.

 

[Rare Jewel]

It is the only possible interpretation of what he said. He said "Ehlers and Boeser at 8ish each vs Marner at 13-14-15M? It's a change with the core and they're good players." He also said "Rantanen or Boeser+Ehlers would be interesting alternatives to Marner", and laid out the 2 for 1 comparison: "151 pts for 15-16M vs 90 pts for 12.5-13M?". When somebody called him out noting that "letting Marner walk for Ehlers and Boeser is a hilariously bad take.", he responded that "being opposed to that is actually a hilariously bad take". He said some of this directly to you, so I don't know why you're pretending otherwise right now.

Where?

Again. You don't make that concession without knowing that you can help and improve other parts of the team. It's not that hard. In a world, with no cap, you go with Marner. But that's not this one, and again, we don't even know if we should be re-signing cause this group hasn't shown jack in the playoffs.

But if you want to keep driving that point home and ignore it and not apply any context to the team, then fine.

It's what every successful team does. We had a guy that was a lot better at it, and he found a bunch of cheap and effective depth pieces to navigate us through a drained prospect pool, multi-year flat cap, and a high-end draft pick dying, and it worked really well, but we unfortunately let him go because of stupid nonsense, and then hired somebody who is pretty bad at it. But the new guy is getting saved by the old guy's prospects right now, and pretty soon he'll have a huge influx of cap space to held cover for his incompetence.

Well, It's a shame that success hasn't found this team for playoffs...

But I suspected as much, but obviously, your Dubas bias plays a part in this. What's the angle here? If Marner goes, then "we can, and we will" properly failed?

I don't have the stomach for those conversations or dealing with other posters hurt pride over that dude anymore.

Who haven't we been able to re-sign? We haven't lost anybody to cap. We've had turnover in our depth for a lot of other reasons, but not for cap, outside of the normal trying to avoid signing bad contracts. Depth turnover is pretty normal, especially for good teams. We actually probably should have done more of it recently. Just in the past year, beyond the core 4, we re-signed 5 forwards, 3 defensemen, and 2 goalies currently on our roster. Marner won't get in the way of re-signing Knies.

Depth turnover can happen, but it seemingly keeps getting more unproven and worse off. I'm not sure how relying on Roberston, Holmberg, and Pacioretty will hold for depth scoring in playoffs.

But the larger point is just to look at the holes in the team. There is no center depth, and still, after all these years, there is not much on RD, in addition to not much having in-term of picks, prospects or cap space to fill them because the last guy blew his brains out. And you need at least one of those to make additions to your team.

So, that leaves you in a spot where they couldn't even make a competitive offer to O'Reilly to stay, and now you'll say, "Oh, he didn't want to stay." Fine, but what about an offer for someone like Chandler Stephenson last summer? Nope, can't do that.

So, now they need to trade the prospects they don't have to get the center and D help they need, then try to fit them into the roster/cap structure that they can't fit into the mid/long term plan.

Then rinse and repeat...

Roster turnover is one thing; poor roster management is another.

You can fill the team just fine. It's not stars over everything. It's team over everything. Logic over emotion. Giving us the best chance moving forward over dwelling on the past. We haven't gotten the cup yet, but this model has been successful through the most difficult possible situations for this model, and abandoning it by getting rid of one of our best players - especially when we're about to get all the cap space we could ever ask for - is just going to make us worse. I'm not interested in getting worse. We've been doing enough of that already.

What are you talking about? What model?

What team has won with 3/4 guys making as much as the Leafs top guys?

Colorado changed a smaller piece for unrelated reasons, after winning with their stars, and they're worse off for it.

lol, right. Well, that's debatable, isn't it? May need some time to pass before we can properly judge.

It is, by definition, cherry picking. You're isolating a specific point type and specific time frame, and misrepresenting the impact of the individual. He gets paid for his overall impact like everybody else, and as I've pointed out, he's more than just a 90 point scorer. He's a 100+ point all-situations two-way force that is dominant offensively and defensively in every game state.

Except for the playoffs. lol

Anyway, Yeah, so it's cherry-picking when the stats don't suit you. Fine, I'll just ignore the 6 goals in 36 playoff games, then...

But the plain facts are he's not scored over 100 points in a season. He may be paced like that at times, and well done; I suppose he wants to get paid for that as well?

He'll be paid more than Rantanen because he's a better player than Rantanen. GMs understand that. Contracts aren't based on team success.

This whole thing is ridiculous. So biased.

Yes, the guy who has a higher PPG in the playoffs than Mackinnon is not as good as Marner.

Dearest of me...

He's paced more than 90 every season for the past 7 years:

2018-2019: 94
2019-2020: 93
2020-2021: 100
2021-2022: 111
2022-2023: 102
2023-2024: 101
2024-2025: 111

The individual seemed to take special care to be precise for the other players, and that's a pretty significant underrepresentation for Marner. Being accurate and consistent is not "glossing" anything up.

Great, I don't care what he paced for. I want him to be paid for what he actually did (90-99 points), and for me, that's not commensurate with a 14m AAV. Is that such a difficult request?

 

[ToneDog]

Leafs look like crap doing nothing. Coach non responsive. Depth players non responsive. Looks like an 18 Wheeler in progress.

Does anybody know if Tre has awoken from his siesta? Has he forgotten how to make a decent trade? Something better than his TDL trades last year please.

 

[Americanadian]

I wonder if Josh Doan could be available for a simple swap with Nick Robertson.

Having a father/son AGM/player duo sounds like a nightmare. What happens at the contract negotiation?

 

[TMLAM34]

Having a father/son AGM/player duo sounds like a nightmare. What happens at the contract negotiation?

They wouldn’t be the first father/son duo in the same organization and I don’t recall there ever being an issue reported.

 

[Rare Jewel]

Does anybody know if Tre has awoken from his siesta? Has he forgotten how to make a decent trade? Something better than his TDL trades last year please.

The Tkachuk deal may still be giving him night sweats.

 

[Smif]

Yep, I agree. The only reason I wanted Domi to be re-upped was to play along side Matthews. That is where he was most effective last season.

Ship Domi out if he IS NOT going to play with Matthews.

JMHO.

I still feel Domi has been our best 3 C since Kadri left. McMann - Domi - Robertson are better than a lot of 3rd lines out there, it's just not the prototypical shutdown 3Rd line that is nice to have.

 

[thusk]

I still feel Domi has been our best 3 C since Kadri left. McMann - Domi - Robertson are better than a lot of 3rd lines out there, it's just not the prototypical shutdown 3Rd line that is nice to have.

ROR ?!?!

 

[Smif]

ROR ?!?!

I originally had post TDL which I should've kept I suppose. I took it out because I think ROR played top 6 moreso than 3C.

 

[Gabriel426]

Yeah, don't think that gets it done.

I was thinking the American Matthews + 25% for the Canadian MacKinnon makes sense.

Well the Leafs been paying the Toronto Tariffs for the past 8 seasons.

 

[Americanadian]

They wouldn’t be the first father/son duo in the same organization and I don’t recall there ever being an issue reported.

When was the last time a GM/AGM had their son on the team?

 

[Rare Jewel]

When was the last time a GM/AGM had their son on the team?

It's a good point; I don't think Utah is going for that deal anyway.

 

[Dekes For Days]

Where? Again. You don't make that concession without knowing that you can help and improve other parts of the team.

Post #1398 for one. And you keep saying that, but people keep advocating for the change without any clear direction. Every suggestion is vague, unrealistic, or makes us worse.

But I suspected as much, but obviously, your Dubas bias plays a part in this. What's the angle here?

No Dubas bias or angle. It's just the facts. If we look through the entire Matthews era and our forwards, and then remove the core 4, deadline additions, and players with less than 20 GP, we end up with 20 forwards that produced 0.4 P/GP or more.

Of those 20:
-13 were brought in by Dubas. They all cost between 700k and 3.5m, and many brought additional defensive and/or PK value.
-7 were brought in by one of Treliving (2), Lou (1), Burke (3), or Nonis (1). They all cost between 3m and 6.25m, and only Bozak brought additional defensive/PK value.

And that's not even including the likes of Robertson, Holmberg, Minten, etc. Or Kampf, who actually brought some decent value when we first brought him in at 1.5m. I'd rather pay ZAR 850k for good defense and get 10 goals, than pay assets and 1.2m to Dewar and get none. Even someone like Ennis got us 12 goals in 51 games for 650k once upon a time.

And its not just forwards. Found quite a few efficient depth defensemen too. The only time we've been a good defensive team was under Dubas, and it wasn't by spending more. If you can't acknowledge that he was better at finding efficient depth, then perhaps you need to examine your own Dubas bias.

And if you look around the league, that's how successful teams tend to win. By keeping their best players and finding efficiencies in their depth. Not by throwing money at depth.

Depth turnover can happen, but it seemingly keeps getting more unproven and worse off.

It's getting worse because we fired the guy that was good at finding it to hire a guy who is bad a finding it! Of course it's worse! Our cap space didn't change (other than getting more). We're just spending it worse.

Who has Treliving actually contributed? He paid Reaves 1.35m to pace 8 points and play like trash. He paid assets and 1.2m for Dewar to pace 2 goals and 14 points. He paid 2.4m for Kampf to pace 18 points. Gregor and Lorentz were cheaper, but still only paced for 16-17 points. Pacioretty pacing 29 points in our top six for 1.5m isn't great.

We shouldn't need to spend 5.5m on Bertuzzi or 3.75m on Domi to get a trash defensive player that can put up 40 points in our top 6. And it doesn't help that he hired a coach to neuter our offense even more, for no actual benefit.

But the larger point is just to look at the holes in the team. There is no center depth, and still, after all these years, there is not much on RD, in addition to not much having in-term of picks, prospects or cap space to fill them because the last guy blew his brains out. And you need at least one of those to make additions to your team.

No team in the cap world is perfect. The holes we have are from management failures, not the fact that we have great players. Getting rid of our best players - especially Marner - would just create a bunch more holes.

We have picks and prospects, and we've had plenty of cap space to make changes, and we're about to have tons more. The types of things we need shouldn't require more than we have of those things.

So, that leaves you in a spot where they couldn't even make a competitive offer to O'Reilly to stay, and now you'll say, "Oh, he didn't want to stay." Fine, but what about an offer for someone like Chandler Stephenson last summer? Nope, can't do that.

We had more than enough to re-sign O'Rielly. He made less than Bertuzzi. Treliving just couldn't get it done. We also could have signed Stephenson if we wanted; though we didn't really need a second line center. instead we chose 3 goal Domi, and Liljegren, who we almost immediately dumped for low picks and a cap dump.

What are you talking about? What model? What team has won with three 3/4 guys making as much as the Leafs top guys?

Most teams win with a model of getting and spending significant money on stars and then finding efficient depth. Having guys this good and signing them all within a year of each other and then having the cap stagnate for half a decade obviously isn't super common, but we were still able to build great teams through that with good GMing, and we're past that now anyway. This is literally the best time to re-sign a star. Even if we re-signed Marner and Tavares for 20m, for example, the core four would be under a much more normal 40% as soon as 2027.

lol, right. Well, that's debatable, isn't it? May need some time to pass before we can properly judge.

You're the one that brought them up. What we know right now is that they won with their stars.

Except for the playoffs.

Including the playoffs.

Anyway, Yeah, so it's cherry-picking when the stats don't suit you.

No, It's cherry picking when you pick out a small sample of only the stats and timeframe that suit you, and ignore what doesnt.

But the plain facts are he's not scored over 100 points in a season. He may be paced like that at times, and well done; I suppose he wants to get paid for that as well?

Hitting some arbitrary mark is irrelevant. All players get paid for the level they perform at, and he has proven it over a massive sample.

Yes, the guy who has a higher PPG in the playoffs than Mackinnon is not as good as Marner.

Mackinnon has a higher playoff PPG than Rantanen, for the record, and you let playoff production without context skew your perception too much. Playoff production is heavily impacted by the very disparate situations teams face. You can have a higher PPG than another player in a small sample of easier-to-produce situations and still be a worse player.

Great, I don't care what he paced for. I want him to be paid for what he actually did (90 points). Is that such a difficult request?

He's hit higher than 90 points as well. He's got 99, 97, and 94 points in 3 separate seasons, and will likely surpass that this year. And whether you care about pace doesn't change that it matters to GMs and agents. Trying to change the standard of how NHL contracts work because you want a deal is indeed a pretty difficult and unrealistic request.

 

[ULF_55]

When was the last time a GM/AGM had their son on the team?

Not sure but List of family relations in the NHL - Wikipedia

 

[Americanadian]

Not sure but List of family relations in the NHL - Wikipedia

View attachment 971575

Coach is completely different. You just decide to play the player or not. GM decides if they stay in the NHL, how much they’re worth, if they get traded. Those decisions are much more complicated for a father.

 

[Rare Jewel]

Post #1398 for one. And you keep saying that, but people keep advocating for the change without any clear direction. Every suggestion is vague, unrealistic, or makes us worse.

That link doesn't take me to that post.

And as I've said before, signing him to two of them isn't the best way or my preferred way to replace Mitch should he leave, but we don't really know if it makes us worse because it hasn't been done.

I find it hard to say for certain that creating better depth and the ability to have cap space to allocate to other areas make the team worse.

no Dubas bias or angle. It's just the facts. If we look through the entire Matthews era and our forwards, and then remove the core 4, deadline additions, and players with less than 20 GP, we end up with 20 forwards that produced 0.4 P/GP or more.

Of those 20:
-13 were brought in by Dubas. They all cost between 700k and 3.5m, and many brought additional defensive and/or PK value.
-7 were brought in by one of Treliving (2), Lou (1), Burke (3), or Nonis (1). They all cost between 3m and 6.25m, and only Bozak brought additional defensive/PK value.

And that's not even including the likes of Robertson, Holmberg, Minten, etc. Or Kampf, who actually brought some decent value when we first brought him in at 1.5m. I'd rather pay ZAR 850k for good defense and get 10 goals, than pay assets and 1.2m to Dewar and get none. Even someone like Ennis got us 12 goals in 51 games for 650k once upon a time.

And its not just forwards. Found quite a few efficient depth defensemen too. The only time we've been a good defensive team was under Dubas, and it wasn't by spending more. If you can't acknowledge that he was better at finding efficient depth, then perhaps you need to examine your own Dubas bias.

And if you look around the league, that's how successful teams tend to win. By keeping their best players and finding efficiencies in their depth. Not by throwing money at depth.

Far be it for me to stand up for Tre, but Dubas had quite a bit more time to impact the team, no? So, I hope he would've had something to show for it. But ultimately, what was achieved?

I'm pretty neutral towards KD; maybe someone who's a died-in-wool advocate for him would see that as bias against him, but that is a perceptual issue on their part. I found the cultish attitude some showed kind of off-putting, but as far as hockey moves, it was average.

And yes, a good team have good players; but they don't have 3 forwards (4 this year) making as much as our guys do, and that's the point.

It's getting worse because we fired the guy that was good at finding it to hire a guy who is bad a finding it! Of course it's worse! Our cap space didn't change (other than getting more). We're just spending it worse.

Who has Treliving actually contributed? He paid Reaves 1.35m to pace 8 points and play like trash. He paid assets and 1.2m for Dewar to pace 2 goals and 14 points. He paid 2.4m for Kampf to pace 18 points. Gregor and Lorentz were cheaper, but still only paced for 16-17 points. Pacioretty pacing 29 points in our top six for 1.5m isn't great.

We shouldn't need to spend 5.5m on Bertuzzi or 3.75m on Domi to get a trash defensive player that can put up 40 points in our top 6. And it doesn't help that he hired a coach to neuter our offense even more, for no actual benefit.

Again, comparing 1.5 years of TRE to 6 years of KD is apples and oranges.

And I wouldn't say it is great right now; I'm not a Treliving apologist. But you're not doing much to dispel any Dubas bias because I can list some trades/signings that hurt the depth just as much as you said he improved it.

No team in the cap world is perfect. The holes we have are from management failures, not the fact that we have great players. Getting rid of our best players - especially Marner - would just create a bunch more holes.

We have picks and prospects, and we've had plenty of cap space to make changes, and we're about to have tons more. The types of things we need shouldn't require more than we have of those things.

I know Dubas was awful, right?

There are two prospects that have good trade value. Minten and Cowan. That's it. There's no first this year; it's likely you're talking about moving next year 1sts if you don't want to subtract either prospect.

While the incoming cap increase is helpful, I think some forget that all the non-core members' salaries will increase as well. What will a Tavares replacement cost with a 100m+ cap if Stephenson was 6.25 last year? What will Knies or McMann's extension look like? What will a quality top 4 defenceman cost, both in terms of assets and/or contract, given that the top 4 are all over 30?

' it just seems like there's little flexibility with the "the pay the stars whatever" method and with no results to back it up.

Most teams win with a model of getting and spending significant money on stars and then finding efficient depth. Having guys this good and signing them all within a year of each other and then having the cap stagnate for half a decade obviously isn't super common, but we were still able to build great teams through that with good GMing, and we're past that now anyway. This is literally the best time to re-sign a star. Even if we re-signed Marner and Tavares for 20m, for example, the core four would be under a much more normal 40% as soon as 2027.

You're the one that brought them up. What we know right now is that they won with their stars.

And they also win with depth and a strong defence core. See Vegas, see Tampa, see Colorado. Neither of these is really present here in Toronto.

And it's easy to do when Mackinnon is on $6.3m; they didn't even get through one season @ 13m before moving Rantanen.

Kind of telling, no?

No, It's cherry picking when you pick out a small sample of only the stats and timeframe that suit you, and ignore what doesnt.

36 games isn't small, particularly in the playoffs; stop making excuses, Especially when Rantanen, the guy you say isn't as good as Mitch, scored more goals in the '23 playoffs (one round) than he has in the last 5 years.

Mackinnon has a higher playoff PPG than Rantanen, for the record, and you let playoff production without context skew your perception too much. Playoff production is heavily impacted by the very disparate situations teams face. You can have a higher PPG than another player in a small sample of easier-to-produce situations and still be a worse player

Holy copium...

Admittedly, I got the ppg stat wrong over Mackinnon; it was only for a certain amount of time.

But I don't really think I do; the playoff is the most important time of the year, and It is kind of hard to take out of context. Both Mackinnon and Rantanen are head and shoulders above our guys in the post-season. It's a bit silly even to debate it.

He's hit higher than 90 points as well. He's got 99, 97, and 94 points in 3 separate seasons, and will likely surpass that this year. And whether you care about pace doesn't change that it matters to GMs and agents. Trying to change the standard of how NHL contracts work because you want a deal is indeed a pretty difficult and unrealistic request.

Sure seems like he's a 90-point scorer to me. And if I'm signing Mitch into his mid-30s where his offensive numbers will likely decline, I'd like the contract to represent 94, 97, 99 points, not the projected/paced numbers.

And also, let's be real; only agents would care about something like that, and I'm tired of getting bullied by agents in negotiations for these guys.

 

[Stephen]

Sure seems like he's a 90-point scorer to me. And if I'm signing Mitch into his mid-30s where his offensive numbers will likely decline, I'd like the contract to represent 94, 97, 99 points, not the projected/paced numbers.

And also, let's be real; only agents would care about something like that, and I'm tired of getting bullied by agents in negotiations for these guys.

It feels inevitable that any eventual contract renewal with Marner will bake in the historic overpayment in as the foundation, but you bring up an interesting sore spot around the question of being a 90+ point scorer.

100 points is not that high of a bar in this era. Between 2020 and 2024 these guys have all produced 100 point seasons, surpassing 100 points 26x times. So Marner's 99 point high would be tied for at least the 27th best individual point season over the past 5 years. I know Jack Hughes hit 99 points the same year Marner did. Hitting 99 points and being in the 90s is great company but not elite, elite company. Also keep in mind a bunch of these guys have hit the 110s, 120s, 130s, 140s and even 150s.

McDavid (4x)
Kucherov (2x)
Mackinnon (2x)
Matthews (2x)
Panarin (1x)
Pastrnak (2x)
Rantanen (2x)
M. Tkachuk (2x)
Miller (1x)
Pettersson (1x)
J. Robertson (1x)
Nugent-Hopkins (1x)
E. Karlsson! (1x)
Huberdeau (1x)
Stamkos (1x)
Gaudreau (1x)
Kaprizov (1x)

 

[Kiwi]

Interesting to see what the plan is

If there going with Gourde they better get that right
Tough season, currently injured and injured until after the TDL finishes
Can't imagine he's going to be overly cheap

There's a lot of risk in that synopsis

 

[Rare Jewel]

It feels inevitable that any eventual contract renewal with Marner will bake in the historic overpayment in as the foundation, but you bring up an interesting sore spot around the question of being a 90+ point scorer.

100 points is not that high of a bar in this era. Between 2020 and 2024 these guys have all produced 100 point seasons, surpassing 100 points 26x times. So Marner's 99 point high would be tied for at least the 27th best individual point season over the past 5 years. I know Jack Hughes hit 99 points the same year Marner did. Hitting 99 points and being in the 90s is great company but not elite, elite company. Also keep in mind a bunch of these guys have hit the 110s, 120s, 130s, 140s and even 150s.

McDavid (4x)
Kucherov (2x)
Mackinnon (2x)
Matthews (2x)
Panarin (1x)
Pastrnak (2x)
Rantanen (2x)
M. Tkachuk (2x)
Miller (1x)
Pettersson (1x)
J. Robertson (1x)
Nugent-Hopkins (1x)
E. Karlsson! (1x)
Huberdeau (1x)
Stamkos (1x)
Gaudreau (1x)
Kaprizov (1x)

Bang on.

And that's before you factor in the playoffs.

 

[notDatsyuk]

When was the last time a GM/AGM had their son on the team?

Don't know how many there have been, but Brent Imlach played 3 games for the Leafs while his dad Punch was GM and coach.