Cap space is there to fill the roster. Leafs have no issue with a 21 man roster. This leaves plenty of room to find a partner for Rielly.

What I do wonder is if they have roster room for all of their nhl wingers.

I think this myth that teams with extra talent to spare won’t get a fair trade lives only on this site. There are 30 other teams out there. That is where the competition comes from.

I agree with your last point. Trade value varies wildly depending on the time of the year, but not because an individual team may have a surplus of talent or a demand for cap space. If a GM doesn't want to pay for a player because they think the other team will get burned on the cap, then they'll just look dumb when the next team makes the trade.

The Leafs look like they're set up well for next season. Sure they won't have a ton of cap space to go spend on big name UFAs, but I don't think that's really part of their plan. Moving forward they'll have no bad contracts like (Marleau, Ceci, etc.) that they can't move if need be. Yeah they'll need to fill a top 4 D role by either re-signing Muzzin, trading a winger like Johnsson/Kapanen, or signing a UFA. The Leafs biggest problem will be losing a really good player in the expansion draft. So you add another top 4 d, you have Reilly, Holl, Dermott, and whoever the new Dman is and you can only protect 3. Without any other moves they'll have Matthews, Tavares, Nylander, Marner, Johnsson, Kapanen, Kerfoot, Mikheyev, and Engvall, protecting only 7. Good problem to have I guess. If these guys are all still on the team I protect Matthews, Tavares, Marner, Nylander, Kapanen, Mikheyev, Engvall up front. Depending who the new top 4 D is an their contract situation I would honestly considering making Reilly available, assuming his play does not improve. But that's a discussion for another day