You never want to count out the Toronto Maple Leafs (at least in the regular season), but with the way they’ve played all season long and how they’ve looked since returning from the Olympics, they’re looking like toast and a team that should be selling at the deadline.
The problem for the Leafs is that they weren’t built to be in this position, and now they’re staring reality in the face, and there’s a strong possibility they’ll be frozen in time trying to figure out how best to approach it. They have players other teams would like (Bobby McMann, Brandon Carlo), among others, and, as Elliotte Friedman shared on Hockey Night in Canada, they’re discussing internally how to potentially broaden the scope of who they’d be comfortable dealing with.
They’re not going to rebuild, not as long as they’ve got Auston Matthews and William Nylander, and not when they don’t have their own first-round picks the next two years. But if they’re going to make the most of their time with Matthews and Nylander, they’re going to have to figure out who to move now to gear up for next season to get back to the playoffs, or else we’ll be talking about yet another house cleaning in the executive and coaching offices in Toronto.
