The Toronto Maple Leafs have a huge hole in their top-six after the sign-and-trade of Mitch Marner to the Vegas Golden Knights. There weren’t many options for the Maple Leafs in free agency. Leafs GM Brad Treliving was on Sportsnet‘s Kyper & Bourne Show and was asked how they’ll go about finding a top-six forward.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Justin Bourne: “I wanted to follow up on the comment you’d made in the press conference, in here, a little bit. Like being aware in terms of looking to replace a top-six forward, find someone to fit into one of those spots.
What is the timeline or process for you? Of kind of, I don’t know if you’re calling around the league and you get a list of guys who might be available. What is it, the process look like, and what do you expect that, you know, I guess, in terms of, would that be something you’re looking to do in the next week? Is that a summer long venture? How do you aim to fill that hole?”
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Treliving: “Well, the process for it, Justin, is once you’re, you know, once the season comes to an end, you touch base with every team in the league. So you, you know you explain what you’re looking for. They explain, sort of, what their situation is. So you have a pretty good handle after, you know, once you’ve, you’ve done your individual team meetings of what’s potentially out there.
And I, you know, it comes back to me at that point where there wasn’t, you know, there wasn’t a huge appetite for, for people to move players, right? You have a rising cap. You’ve got a shortage, you know, a shortage of top players. You’ve got a lot of teams, whether, whatever window they’re in or whatever, I should say, whatever stage their team’s in. I think the league is in it, I would describe right now is everybody’s trying to take a step.
You know, everybody’s trying to, you know, not necessarily, throw a lot of people off, off the boat. And a large portion of the reason for that is because you’ve got a rising cap, right? There isn’t, there isn’t, we’ve seen in the last, you know, really, last number of years, when, when we, we’ve operated really, in a flat or marginal increase cap, where people run into issues, right? And so now they’ve got to make decisions and move somebody out.
There certainly wasn’t that, you know, there wasn’t a lot of that going on in the league. Therefore, there’s, you know, there’s players that, you know, less players hitting the mark, and less players available, and more people retaining their own players.
So in, you know, and the other piece with it is just identify what we’re looking. You know, I think I mentioned it the other day, it’s just not as simple as saying, ‘okay, Mitch is Mitch has moved on. We’re just, we go replace Mitch.’
To me, it’s, you kind of got to do that the aggregate, right? You, the opportunity allows you is more cap space, and can you, can you, you know, try to get more depth? Can you try to spread it around? Can you, over the course of maybe a couple of moves, replace the offense that’s required, or that you’re trying to replace, and spread that out throughout the lineup?
So as far as timing, good question. You’d like to do it yesterday. You’d like to do it today? You’d like to do it tomorrow? I don’t know. I mean, we don’t play here till October.
And, and the question people have asked, ‘Are you finished?’ I don’t think you’re ever finished, right? You’re always looking to try to improve your team. You don’t know when those opportunities are going to, are going to surface. If somebody gets into a jam, if somebody’s, you know, whatever the opportunity is, but you have a pretty good handle on what people are trying to do. What players may become available?
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And you just take that information and then you know you try to get out and whether it be through free agency or through trade, try to, you know, upgrade yourself and find players that could fit and provide what you’re looking for.”
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