Winning ways keep the trade buzz away

First-year Leafs know stresses of moving at deadline

If Max Domi knows one thing, he will finish this NHL season on the same team he started it with.

The Maple Leafs forward has been a hot commodity the past two seasons, traded from Columbus to playoff-bound Carolina at the deadline in 2022, and traded again from Chicago to playoff-bound Dallas at last year’s deadline.

“When you know it’s coming, it’s pretty exciting,” Domi said. “I haven’t experienced a trade that caught me off guard.

“It’s exciting because you’re going to a new group, but it’s also a tough when you leave a team you’ve been with the last few months or the last year or two. You build special relationships, not just with players but with training staff, the coaches, the travel people.”

Players throughout the league will be on pins and needles the next few days until the trade deadline hits at 3 p.m. Friday.

It can be anxiety-inducing for any player who knows he is on the block, especially a veteran with a particular skill set whose contract might be expiring. Like Ryan Reaves, traded from the Penguins to the Golden Knights at the deadline in 2018.

“That was a really good thing for me,” Reaves said. “I went from Pittsburgh, where I wasn’t playing a ton and just didn’t really go well in that system, to Vegas, where it rejuvenated my career a little bit. Had arguably four of my best career seasons there.

“Sometimes (a trade is) good, sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s tough leaving a place you thought you were going to be for a bit.”

Reaves is 37 and admits it has taken time to develop his current mental outlook for the trade deadline.

“You’ve got to take it day by day and not think about it because you can’t do anything about it,” he said. “It’s out of your hands, so there’s no point in sweating about it.

“I’ve stopped thinking about it a little bit because, honestly, it just takes too much out of you. You think about it for so long and then it doesn’t happen. You’re just wasting energy.”

Jake McCabe joined the Leafs at last season’s deadline. “Crazy how a year flies,” he said. Families, it should not be forgotten, are traded, too. The trade uprooted McCabe’s wife, Gaby, and their two young children, Georgia and Finn.

“Uprooting your family mid-season is a lot on an individual,” McCabe said. “That part was tricky. But, other than that, it was pretty seamless. The Leafs took care of us from the get-go.”

It was a trade McCabe welcomed, going from the going-nowhere Blackhawks to the playoff-bound Leafs.

“For me personally, it was excitement,” he said. “I was ready to move on and get a chance to play in the playoffs. And obviously landed here, a tremendous spot for me and my family.”

Within the Leafs locker room, with the team headed for the playoffs for an eighth straight season, there is a certain curiosity about who else GM Brad Treliving might find. He has already added righthanded defenceman Ilya Lyubushkin, back for his second tenure with the team.

There’s a sense that at least one more addition is likely.

“It just shows that management is committed to trying to bring the Stanley Cup here,” Reaves said. “We’re looking forward to seeing what happens. We’ve got a really good room right now and the team has been playing pretty well.

“But I think every team’s going to start loading up, and you can’t fall behind.”