TSN: Pierre LeBrun said that the Toronto Maple Leafs did talk to Patick Kane and his agents but were not one of the three or four teams on Kane’s short list.
Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving said a earlier this week that upgrading their blue line is their priority.
The New Jersey Devils are another team that could be in the market for a defensemen as they look to find their “A” game and see if they are a true contender.
“They have talked to the Calgary Flames about Nikita Zadorov. They would like to add some physicality on their backend at some point but the reality for now is to get the ship going straight here.”
TSN: Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving on their blue line and their need. They hope to have a better idea of John Klingberg‘s situation by the end of this week.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Mark Masters: “How do you assess the defense?”
Treliving: “Well, it’s hard right Mark, you’ve had a lot of injuries, you know. So I think, I think what that does is it tests your depth. You know, we’ve got players playing and I think they’ve given us good minutes, so we’ve signed as depth players. You see them playing into the teens in a number of games already. And it pushes people into different chairs, right?
You know, you the whole idea of, to me, what you tried to do as a team is slot people in the right circumstances. So they’re handling the right minutes and when you have injuries it pushes people you know. It’s an area that we wanted to see if we could strengthen regardless. Now when you have injuries, it tests your depth.
Like I said, you have people probably playing higher and more minutes than you want and they’re hanging in there, but it’s certainly an area, we’d like to we’d like to help ourselves. Now, you know, when you’re sitting here in November, that’s, it’s not as easier said than done, but that’s certainly an area that we look at and see if there’s a way that we can help ourselves.”