You have to play the game. If Vancouver, that has a hard on for him, want him, the price is #3 and either another 1st or a top prospect that was probably a 1st last year. In Vancouver, they have tickets to sell and they want to sell the sizzle. Same thing for Calgary. I still think San Jose passes over Stenberg for a defenseman and Stenberg falls to #3. Calgary is a different story, but they have a lot of young talent in the pipeline and you can still draft one of the big 3 defensemen.
At the end of the draft, the reality is, the Leafs still won’t have a generational talent to build the team around whether they draft 1st or trade down. They won’t have a guy who steps into the NHL right away and turns them into a contender again either. They had a zoom meeting with Matthews today, which I thought was a fucking joke. If you’re serious about meeting Matthews, either fly him in or go see him in Arizona. But these meetings need to start being the discussions of where Matthews wants to play next because they need to blow this team up.
The UFA market is terrible. The Leafs have no assets to upgrade through trade either. Hopefully by January, Matthews is playing well individually but the team is doing poorly and everybody involved decides it’s time to trade him and blow up the whole team.