Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman reported on Saturday night that the Maple Leafs are beginning the process of selling.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are approaching a crossroads.
The club may have defeated the Vancouver Canucks 3-2 in the shootout on Saturday night — their first win since Jan. 17, when they beat the Winnipeg Jets 4-3 in overtime — but they're still eight points behind the Buffalo Sabres and Boston Bruins for the final wild-card spot.
It appears the Maple Leafs, being that far out of a playoff spot, are moving towards being sellers at the Mar. 6 NHL trade deadline. According to Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman on Saturday Headlines, Toronto has begun calling other teams and seeing what's out there for them trade-wise.
"Everybody sees the standings. Everybody sees that the Maple Leafs are in a position they didn't expect to be in," Friedman reported. "The key thing I heard is: they haven't discussed like anything that anyone would call extraordinary or huge or stunning.
"I think that some of the early conversations are about things you would expect, but they have begun the conversations around the league of, 'What do you think of our roster? What kind of things would you be interested in?' But I don't think it would be anything that anyone right now would consider earth-shattering or anything like that."
Toronto has three attractive pending unrestricted free agents: Scott Laughton, Bobby McMann, and Troy Stecher, each of whom could fetch solid value on the trade market.
McMann is on pace for a career year in the NHL, with 17 goals and 29 points in 53 games (he's five points from tying his career-high) and can play top-six minutes. Laughton has 10 points in 36 games this year, but brings tremendous value as a teammate, on and off the ice.
Stecher, the lone pending UFA defenseman, has been an important piece for the club ever since being picked up on waivers from the Edmonton Oilers in November. The right-shot defender has averaged 20:14 through 36 games with Toronto.
There are also players like Nick Robertson (a restricted free agent at the end of this season), Max Domi (who has 10 points in his last seven games), Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and Brandon Carlo, who could pull in other assets for the Maple Leafs.
Each has term on their contract (aside from Robertson), but there may be a few teams that could see value in those players. It's just a matter of what the Maple Leafs believe each player's value is, and what other teams are willing to give up for said players.
"We're in a different position than we've been in in the past," said Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving earlier this week on TSN's OverDrive.
"So you take all of that information, you're continually talking throughout the league and seeing what's in front of you, but you're planning based upon where your team's sitting and what you think is in front of you.
"So it's the combination of, yeah, you know where the games sit leading up to the deadline. But you've also got four months of information already in the rearview mirror, and you make decisions accordingly."