National Post (National Edition)
Patience, now, is a virtue
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 William Nylander, whose name has been most floated in trade rumours among the 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.