Bobby McMann is from Wainwright, Alberta. He grew up about two hours southeast of the Edmonton Oilers home rink, and right now there’s a reasonable case to be made that that’s where he should be playing hockey.
McMann is having a good season for a Toronto team that is, despite what their fans will tell you at every available opportunity, not making the playoffs. He can hit, he can produce, he’ll do the dirty work without being asked twice, and he’ll do what his coach tells him to without having to be asked twice. Not every player on the current Oilers roster can say the same thing. Some of them can barely do one thing consistently, let alone several.
The situation in Toronto is pretty straightforward. McMann is on an expiring contract, he reportedly wants around $4.5 million on his next deal, and the Leafs don’t even want to give him $4 million. That gaps not going to close, which means Toronto has a decision to make. They can move him before the deadline and get something back, or watch him walk in the offseason for nothing while a fanbase that’s already running out of patience asks pointed questions about what kind of decisions their GM is making.
The Leafs are sellers whether they want to admit it or not, and there’s at least some urgency on their end to get a return that isn’t just a handshake and a best of luck.
Edmonton, meanwhile, has some things to move. They already dealt Andrew Mangiapane. Albeit, along with a 2027 conditional first-round pick, which, fine, not great, but it happened. Now they have to offloaded Trent Frederic, who’s making $3.8 million and hasn’t been what the Oilers needed him to be. And frankly, Kris Knoblauch needs players who show up every night and do it again the next. Frederic hasn’t exactly carved out an indispensable role.
If Edmonton retains $1 million of that contract and sends him to Toronto, that gets the conversation started. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it isn’t and you need to attach an AHL player to get it across the finish line, which is fine, that’s how these things work.
The other option is Quinn Hutson, and this is where it gets more complicated. Hutson is a legitimate prospect, a fine hockey player, and everyone in the organization likes him. But he is not his brothers, and that’s not a knock so much as it is an honest assessment of where he projects.
The Oilers need help next season, maybe the season after, because they’re running on McDavid’s contract timeline. Hutson isn’t ready to push them that far yet, and trading him alongside something else to get McMann isn’t as painful a pill as it might sound on the surface.
Once you make that move with Hutson, you’re also looking at around $2.5 million that needs to go down to the AHL, and they could get that done with Connor Murphy. The Oilers are carrying $2.2 million of his $4.4 million deal, and parking that in the minors opens up some cap flexibility. And listen, Murphy is one possibility, not the only.
You could try to work Anthony Stolarz back into this somehow, afterall, an Edmonton goaltending situation that includes him is a more comfortable one than what they have right now, but that’s probably a reach. Stolarz has value, and Toronto knows it.
Then it’s pretty simple when all is said and done. McMann on a line with Vasily Podkolzin and Kasperi Kapanen, who can play center, is a good third line. Three players who forecheck hard, compete every shift, and don’t need the puck handed to them to be effective. On a team built around McDavid and Draisaitl, surrounded by the Matt Savoies and players still developing or maxed out, that line does something against other teams’ third and fourth lines in a long playoff series.
Toronto gets Frederic or Hutson, clears McMann’s contract situation out of the room, and ships him to the Western Conference if they only want to see him twice a year. Edmonton gets a power forward with local ties who wants to win and costs them a player that wasn’t solving any of their problems anyway.
Seems pretty straightforward.
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