Toronto’s dilemma: make a bold move or stay the course?
The weird thing about the Toronto Maple Leafs and the question that haunts every conversation about them — big trade or no? — is that it became a reasonable question so soon.
It has only been a season and a half since coach Mike Babcock introduced himself at the Air Canada Centre with his natural resting scowl and warned grimly about the years of pain that would be visited on Leafs fans before the good times would come.
And it has only been two years since the kinds of pressing questions that surrounded the Leafs were whether it made more sense to throw a jersey or waffles on the ACC ice. Or if the team’s impromptu decision to skip the post- game salute to the fans was a national scandal or just a local one.
The idea in the winter of 2015 that the Leafs would, in the winter of 2017, be deciding whether they were in win- now mode was about as farcical as Donald Trump becoming president of the United States. And yet, here we are. So, should the Leafs mortgage some of their young talent, particularly among the forwards, for a defenceman that would give them a better shot at a long playoff run this season? Hot take: It depends. The dirty secret about the favourite sports argument of all time — should Team X go all- in or be patient? — is that the answer is always, “it depends.” That is, there will always be scenarios that fit anywhere on the continuum between an excellent trade and what-in- the- hell- wasthat-guy-thinking?
If the team is particularly deep with young talent at a certain position, then it’s much more l i kely an exchange would make sense: losing a very good young player is less of a problem if that young player wasn’t likely to be a key part of the team.
The same simple evaluations apply to the player coming the other way. Is it a short- term rental or someone who will be on the team for years? And if the latter, is that a good or bad thing? Will the player be useful for multiple seasons, or quickly become a contract albatross?
You will note there are a lot of hypotheticals here. The only thing more meaningless than debating hypothetical trades with made- up names thrown in is debating hypothetical no- name trade concepts.
Back to the Maple Leafs. They are rather unexpectedly in the playoff mix at the all- star break thanks mostly to an absurd crop of rookie forwards and because Frederik Andersen is definitely not Jonathan Bernier.
This has defined the trade discussion rather narrowly: should they move one of the forwards for an elite defenceman? And, well, it depends. Moving James van Riemsdyk, still youngish at 27 but positively crusty compared with Toronto’s new core, wouldn’t be terribly painful.
But trading someone like Will i am Nylander, whose name has been most floated in trade rumours among t he Toronto rookies this season, is far less defensible. Nylander seems to get brought up as trade bait only because he happens to be the third- best rookie forward on the Leafs, behind the obviously untouchable Auston Matthews and the almost-certainly untouchable Mitch Marner.
But Nylander is also fourth in rookie scoring, behind only Matthews and Marner, and Winnipeg’s fabulous Patrik Laine, who jumped ahead of the Leafs tandem with two points on Thursday night. There is not a lot of shame in being outscored among rookies by three players who all look to be generational talents.
Nylander is, at 20 years old, scoring at a points- per- 60 minutes pace ahead of Jack Eichel’s rookie season last year, and he’s also the quarterback of Toronto’s very effective power play, which is third-best in the NHL. The Swede scored his 10th goal on Thursday night, giving the Leafs four rookies with double- digit goals — Connor Brown is the fourth. This is the first time a team has had four rookies with at least 10 goals since 1953. Considering how much the league has changed since then, you might as well say since never.
It’s hard to imagine a scenario in which breaking that group up makes sense. Toronto has a boatload of young forward talent, and that talent will become all the more valuable as they get more experience and continue to play on affordable entry- level contracts. Toronto’s management will also not lack for opportunity to add more defence help in the coming years, as older and/or injured players like Joffrey Lupul and Stephane Robidas come off the salarycap books.
But the biggest reason for Toronto to stand pat, or at least stand somewhat pat, is this: it is early. Hoo boy, is it early.
The Leafs have played onehalf season of the kind of hockey that management must have envisioned when president Brendan Shanahan took a blowtorch to the front office and started turning over the roster two-plus years ago.
Their rookie crop, as good as it is, could yet hit a wall and slump toward the kind of results that were widely expected of them this year: good, fun to watch, but a little too young to contend. And if they do manage to hang around, and make the playoffs with all the rookies still on board, all the better. The post-season is a crapshoot anyway; there’s little guarantee that a big trade would necessarily make a difference in a best-of-seven series.
Shanahan said a lot about patience when he came to town. He said it a lot more when he hired Babcock with a briefcase full of gold. He would do well, at this point, to heed his own advice.