Mikko Rantanen’s trade from Colorado to Carolina unofficially kicked off the NHL’s trade deadline season. Over the past few years teams seem to be pushing back their moves from deadline day to deadline week, and now to whatever this is. Welcome to the NHL’s Trade Deadline Six Weeks, I guess. 

This season’s unique schedule has created a new deadline, as many GMs are viewing the 4 Nations break as a great opportunity to get a player in and acclimated. There’s also a growing understanding that if you’re going to rent a player, you may as well rent them for 30 games and not 20. 

The Toronto Maple Leafs have lost six of their last nine games in regulation, and have had something that was teased early in the season become a clear and obvious problem: their turn to simple, north/south hockey starves them of offence, which was already a post-season problem. I should note, injuries haven’t helped on the scoring front either.

And so, here’s what we have: A team with a clear need (an offensively capable centre), and is a legitimate threat to win the division and make noise in the playoffs. They’re also a team whose salary cap picture looks a lot brighter in future years with the release of the new upper limits. 

Of course, we also have a fanbase starved for post-season success. 

So, much like we speculated with the Flames (and got a win), let’s speculate on the Leafs. What should we expect from their trade deadline efforts?

Morgan Rielly isn’t going anywhere

Yes, he’s been good, and yes, we spent some time on Real Kyper and Bourne playing around with “Rielly for J.T. Miller,” but that was more fun podcast banter than “this could happen.”

Good defencemen are hard to come by so at the deadline what you get are a lot of teams squinting at bad defencemen and convincing themselves they’re average. You usually don’t give up on defencemen who have legitimate ability. The best predictor of future behaviour is what we’ve seen in the past, and for long stretches of very recent play, Rielly has been a great Leaf, particularly in the post-season.

Yup, he’s not been great so far this year. But he’s got more to give, and he’s going to be a part of the club, so let’s move on from that option. 

Nick Robertson probably gets traded

I believe Robertson is not just an NHL player, but that he still has the potential to be a 20-to-25 goal scorer in the league. I also believe it won’t happen with the Leafs, because there’s no room in the top-six, and no room on the power play. He’s a great option with upside for a selling team to acquire in a deal where’s he’s probably a secondary piece. He’s a legitimate plus-value asset, at a time when the Leafs don’t have many, and are shopping. 

When Toronto gets healthy, it gets very hard to get into their lineup (as I’ll lay out at the bottom of this), and they’ll literally only use Robertson on the third line, if at all (he isn’t cut out for any fourth line and they won’t try him top-six). Maybe he’s on such a cheap salary that he comes out of the press box as needed, but if someone is going to head out, he makes the most sense.

One of Fraser Minten or Easton Cowan gets traded

The Leafs don’t need a deadline where they add a couple bottom-six grinders and a seventh defenceman. It’s a Weird Year, without any clear favourites, and the Leafs have as good a chance as any other team. They need to separate themselves with a bigger move. 

Again, they don’t have a ton of assets, but to acquire a real player they’ll have to give someone up. Minten is a guy who would get another team excited (he can play in the NHL today and is, at worst, a very high IQ two-way third line centre). Cowan is the higher upside, higher risk on the downside play, so you have a prospect who would suit just about any selling team’s fancy. 

So what comes back? Let’s start with the obvious.

A top-six centre, top-nine at worst

Is it Brock Nelson, is it Yanni Gourde, is it Scott Laughton? Is it a long-shot like Dylan Cozens or an even longer shot like Miller? 

Whatever the case, the Leafs have been exposed at centre of late. The Auston Matthews line has been controlling its minutes, but past that they’re rolling out what feels like three fourth line centres. They can’t get anything going when their top line is off the ice.

This is where the previously mentioned prospect is going – as the return for the best available centre.

It’s an annual thing, and every team with Cup aspirations does it, but you really do need to be seven or eight defencemen deep. For the Leafs to start the post-season with all of Conor Timmins, Simon Benoit, Philippe Myers and Jani Hakanpaa just feels like they’ve got too many 6/7 slot guys. It will be interesting who becomes available as numerous mediocre teams have convinced themselves they’re still in it, but I’d expect at least one new name that’s about a No. 4 or a No. 5 to be among Toronto’s pairs when the puck drops on Game 1 of the playoffs. (Mario Ferraro? David Savard? The return of Cody Ceci? Brian Dumoulin?)

And then it comes down to…

Hows the team’s health?

Potential additional pick-ups

Earlier this season I wrote about how the Leafs are strangely injury prone, and injury prone at fairly crucial spots, no less. 

If they continue to struggle with health over the next month, it isn’t out of the question for them to add a winger. Brandon Saad, currently a UFA, is certainly an interesting name.

What it’ll look like after the deadline, when healthy

Since Nelson is the most common name I hear brought up in connection with the Leafs, and very attainable (unless the Islanders continue to win every night), let’s take a look at the Maple Leafs’ forward group with him it:

Knies – Matthews – Marner

McMann – Tavares – Nylander

Pacioretty – Nelson – Jarnkrok

Lorentz – Kampf – Dewar

Domi – Holmberg – Reaves

I realize having Domi on the outside looking in to start the playoffs might seem jarring, but it’s a fit thing. Maybe some people prefer him to Jarnkrok on the third line here, but I think Pacioretty-Nelson-Jarnkrok is a line with a conscience you could play against anyone and they still might shoot it in the net. 

Domi’s lack of a defensive bent changes that for me. You could put him on the fourth line, but I’m not sure he’s what you’re looking for out of that group.

And of course, there’s the matter of dealing with the salary cap. You might need some retention on Nelson to make all this work, and you might have to send down a body to the American League. You would need Brandon Pridham to do his thing.

But in a salary cap world, with the league seeing unprecedented levels of parity, a forward corps like the above is pretty darn good, and awfully likely. You’d have a third line that can at least occasionally score, and a fourth line that would defend like hell. There’s always question marks, but with a good trade or two, that Leafs lineup would be one heck of a tough out.