2025-26 Toronto Maple Leafs General Discussion

[ZBBM]

Laugh away fellas. I'll eat my words if and when McDavid signs here, and gladly. Otherwise, it is what I said it is.

 

[mr grieves]

Is it still disastrous if the Leafs win the Cup this year? Or next year? What if that cap space is what helps them sign McDavid? I don't think we can say it's certain to go down as disastrous. It absolutely has that potential, but, it very much has potential to go the other way. We can say for sure that the status quo wasn't working. Something needed to be done. Was it letting Marner go? Only time will tell, but running it back again was not an option, that's for sure.

Well, there's no running it back without a running partner. Are you "letting someone go" when they walk out on you?

So the options here were: (1) let Marner play out his contract and leave in free agency or for a rights trade, or (2) do whatever you need to do to move him out NMC be damned [i.e. take whatever Vegas will give you], or (3) read the room and move him out before the NMC kicks in.

Tre only really had options 1 and 2 available to him, and I don't really fault how he handled this. With the NMC, you're realistically looking at a one or maybe 2 (Dallas?) team list. Is there more than Roy that you can get? Sure, but not much.

Only Shanahan and Dubas could've gone through Door #3, and that they didn't might be among the worst things that've happened to the Leafs. cw is 100% right about the roster and pipeline Matthews is going to be looking at in a couple years. Would Marner have brought back some assets to help replenish the pipeline and round out the roster?

 

[herman]

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