Beggers can’t be choosers at this point. Leafs need to add some offense into the top 6 any way they can. JT or Roy can both play the wing if needed.
The talking heads are all saying nobody is selling. So the options are Ehlers …..or somebody’s bad contract (Kadri).
I posted this twice now and it didn’t take. I find that unusual. Something in the original tagging of your post when quoting it maybe?
Most teams consider themselves in the window, on the way up or sustaining a level of competitiveness right now. The only teams I can see who would or should be dealing are Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, the Islanders, Nashville, Boston and Calgary.
If you look at the moves they made in the past few days . . .the Islanders dealt Dobson and their only notable signing was Drouin; I will say that outside of Pelech and Pulock, I’ve never liked the performance vs. salary for most of their forwards.
Philly overpaid Dvorak and Vladar – but I think they are just biding time while they wait for some of their picks to come to fruition while never bottoming out enough to finish the job. Michkov is excellent but the rest of their youth is pretty questionable. I like Bonk, Luchanko and Barkey fine but none of them are significant needle movers. This year they drafted Martone, who feels a little like Knies – but it’s far from enough to help them. That said their only players of interest are Couturier, Konecny and Ristolainen. Personally not a fan of Risto and neither Konecny (8.8) or Couturier (7.8) are worth their contracts.
I think Nashville, Boston and Calgary all want to see where their teams end up before they consider making a move.
Off of Nashville we all like O’Reilly and Bunting isn’t dreadful @ $4.5, albeit there are better options at that cap hit.
Not clear on Boston but most of their signings feel like guys you sign to trade later – like Eyssimont and Jeannot both feel like TDL guys, but the term given to Jeannot says otherwise.
Calgary – who haven’t said their open for business, but they have also said that they are adhering to a process which strongly alludes to a rebuild. They have pieces people would like – Andersson, Weegar or Coleman – The other problem is that they have guys who are making more than most teams would want to pay for the guys – like Huberdeau, Kadri, Sharangovich or Lomberg
Pittsburgh seem the only team that’s truly understood their fate and word is that Dubas is basically Monty Halling the teams around the league. Granted – and it’s been discussed to death before – Crosby, Malkin, Karlsson and Letang all have full NMCs and Rakell, Hayes, Heinen, Graves and Acciari all have partial NTCs. The only guys they can easily move that I’d think are marketable are Rust and Lizotte