Sportsnet: Nick Kypreos, Justin Bourne, and Sam McKee on the Toronto Maple Leafs struggles and if they could become sellers at the trade deadline if things continue to go bad for them. (Before last night’s win in Calgary)
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Bourne: “What if, what if it goes poorly over the next three games here (they won one of those games last night) whatever and you know they don’t have success on the road against very good teams. And you’re talking about okay, you know, you need maybe two defensemen. You need a center. You need a goalie. Whatever it may be.
What would it look like if the Leafs were sellers? What would it look like?”
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Bourne: “Hypothetically …”
Kypreos: “Listen, they’re going into …”
Bourne: “I’m not saying they are sellers. I think they’re buyers.”
Kypreos: “They’re, they’re. JD’s point. They’ve got a four-game losing streak going into . If it turns into a yes, get ready for this, what happens if it turns into a nine-game losing..”
Bourne: “Why, is there schedule that hard after that too.”
McKee: “Double Jets.”
Kypreos: “Calgary, Vancouver, Seattle, Winnipeg, Winnipeg. All-Star break.”
Bourne: “Ah, none of those teams have been any good.”
Kypreos: “Listen to me. Where, okay, let’s say they don’t lose nine in a row, but they’ve lost eight out of nine.”
Bourn: “Yeah.”
Kypreos: “Where’s that question now on, on going out there and getting a (Chris) Tanev, still does it change?”
Bourne: “Well, and I’ll tell you where this came from. I did Calgary radio . My boy George Rusik. We were chatting about this and he said, he asked me the question about the Flames and they’re having some success and does that still mean that you would want to trade (Chris) Tanev, (Noah) Hanafin, (Elias) Lindholm, all these guys and they said ‘Of course you do. You know, they need to be realistic that even if they got in the playoffs, this isn’t your, the year they’re gonna win a Cup.’ And they would be so much better off going forward getting assets for those guys, rather than doing what the Raptors did trading for Poeltl, pushing into playoffs as a team below .500.”
McKee: “Well done Bourney.”
Bourne: “Thank you. You’ve got nothing to show for it when you should have made those moves when you had the chance to move them. And all of a sudden I had this epiphany, it’s not impossible that the Leafs could be there if things went poorly enough for a stretch of games.
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So I was thinking what it would look like if they were to trade, Mitch Marner, T.J. Brodie, Tyler Bertuzzi, and all of a sudden you have Matthews, Nylander, Tavares, the assets you got back from all these guys. Are you better positioned in the years ahead to win a Cup?”