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Let’s get nuts, shall we?
We don’t know for sure that Toronto Maple Leafs star winger Mitch Marner is available for trade, but the conditions are ripe right now for the Leafs to move him with him having one year left on his contract and the Leafs perpetually being close to the cap ceiling.
We also know that any time there is a big-name player potentially on the market the Vegas Golden Knights are going to at least be kicking the tires. Vegas is another team that’s forever close to the cap but doesn’t let that get in the way of making any move they deem fit.
With Marner’s cap hit being nearly $11 million and Vegas having more than a few players who could tickle Toronto’s fancy to help balance the ledger (Shea Theodore, William Karlsson, Nicolas Roy, Ivan Barbashev, Adin Hill for instance), it’s a trade that could be feasibly put together and make everyone happy.
This isn’t to say that Vegas doesn’t have some of their players they’d like to re-sign this summer (Jonathan Marchessault, Chandler Stephenson, William Carrier, Alec Martinez) that they’ll have difficulty in doing so because of the cap, but again, when has that stopped GM Kelly McCrimmon?
Teams that host the NHL Draft always like to make a splash and since Vegas is picking late in the first round, it’s hard to do that from there. Swinging a blockbuster trade is another way to bring the house down and doing it for Marner would leave everyone around the league talking for years to come.
