Team: 2023-24 Toronto Maple Leafs

Initial Creation Date: May 15, 2023

Published: May 15, 2023

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

I want to preface this by saying that I am NOT someone who wants to see this core get reworked yet. Marner is my favourite Leafs player, but if winning a cup means moving Mitch, then I would bite my lip and wish his well.

First off, let's start with my reasoning for moving Mitch and not any other of the core. We'll start with Tavares, who gets a pretty brief explanation. He's the captain, he's on the wrong side of 30 and makes 11 million dollars, and has a full NMC. He's not going anywhere. Next up is Matthews, who is already one of the greatest Leafs of all time and is the key to this teams success. AM34 is far from the issue. Finally we've got Nylander, who has the "killer instinct" we so desperately need, as well as a fantastic offensive game. His style is just too perfect for us, and even if we extend him, he will still cost less than Mitch. Now, the Leafs without Marner are a VERY different team. Mitch does so much to create room, cover up defensively, and is generally just the heartbeat of this team's offense. The main issue however is the money. While Marner's playmaking ability objectively makes the Leafs a better team, having that much money locked up in one guy stifles our depth structure. Obviously we have 2 other guys also making an absurd amount of money, but like I mentioned earlier, one is the GOAT and the other has a full NMC.

New Jersey is, in my opinion, the perfect team to try to acquire Marner. They are already a pretty strong team and are in the hunt for a Stanley Cup. They have the assets AND cap space to acquire Marner, which is a move that immediately makes them the best team in the league IMO. Their main core are already locked down on long term deals that are extremely team friendly, so they also don't have to worry about risking any of their core. Plus, the cap ceiling will begin to rise at a decent rate, giving them enough flexibility to bridge their RFAs before signing them to bigger deals when the cap has raised a good amount. Getting back an elite scoring winger in Alexander Holtz would be a good start for Toronto. I don't want to say that Holtz was necessarily ousted by the Devils, but he was sent up and down quite a bit, and if the Devils are adding Marner to a RW group that already consists of Mercer and Bratt, then there isn't a ton of room for Holtz anyways. Next we have Arseni Gritsyuk, a prospect who is not very well known outside of the Devils fandom. He just had a fantastic KHL campaign and could be a VERY nice target for Toronto to go out and get. Then we have Sharangovich who despite having a down year is a guy that can come in to play on the PK and has good scoring upside. He can be signed for 1 year at his QO while still expiring as an RFA, which gives us the flexibility next offseason to decide what to do after getting Matthews and Nylander extended. The 2nd round pick will be late anyways, so there's no real loss there.

Now we have the UFA signings. The big one is Killorn, who plays a very hard nosed style of game and has that cup winning experience. I know many people (including myself) point to the fact that Killorn had a stretch of 30(!) playoff games without a goal, but his style is something that the Leafs desperately need. Then we have Tyler Bertuzzi, who I think would be awesome on the Leafs. His style of play is extremely sought after, and he has recently found a higher gear in his offensive game in a fantastic stretch of playoff games. The final UFA signing was Damon Severson who is coming off of a really great season. I used Brodie as a contract comp. in terms of length, but he gets 2 mil more because he is objectively the better defenseman.

Again, I'm not a huge fan of blowing up the core, but if it has to be done, this is what I would like to see