Elliotte Friedman Says No Matter What, He Sees This Being The Final Season With William Nylander In Toronto
The one thing I do believe–no matter what happens–is that this will be William Nylander’s final season as a Toronto Maple Leaf. Whether he signs or whether he doesn’t sign, this is gonna be it. And even if he does sign, I think Toronto trades him by the draft at the latest.
Okay so is everybody sick of hearing about William Nylander at this point? I’d have to assume you all are. But here’s the thing. We’re only 2 days away from the December 1st deadline for him to sign before he’s ineligible to play for the rest of the season so I’m going to get these last few remaining blogs in while I still can. So everybody can shut up and just let me blog.
Anyways. This actually makes a ton of sense. Because from all the reports out there, it sounds like the Maple Leafs and William Nylander have been able to agree on the value component of his next contract and that number is at $6.9M AAV. What is holding up the signing now is they can’t agree on the term for the contract. And while it seems like that negotiation would be just between the Maple Leafs and Nylander, what if Kyle Dubas is doing some shopping around right now? What if Dubas is going around to some other GMs in the league and asking for their input on where they would like to see Nylander’s contract end up before they make a trade for him? That would make a lot more sense considering they’ve been arguing over term for about a full week now after it sounded like they agreed on value last week. Lot of moving parts, ya know?
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But what we’ve seen this entire season so far is that Toronto really doesn’t have much of a need for William Nylander. They are perfectly fine without him. And with Matthews and Marner producing at the level they produce at, you focus on those two guys and Tavares for your future. So you sign Nylander today or tomorrow, then you play out the rest of this season and see if you can make a legitimate run at the Cup, then once the offseason comes around you see if you can spend that Nylander money on another defenseman to go along with Morgan Reilly. It all makes a little too much sense. Now the only question left would be who ends up making the trade for Nylander in the summer.
The Flyers will have a new GM who will be given the green light to make a splash. Just saying…
But then you also have Mike Babcock saying this today. So who knows. Can’t wait for 48 more hours of this.
P.S. – I hope you all enjoyed this #TorontoThursday. I think I’ll call it quits after 4 Maple Leafs blogs today. Unless something comes up, of course. But it’s been fun to pretend I work for TSN today.