The Maple Leafs fell 5-2 to the Kraken on Thursday night, falling further down the standings.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are in a unique position — one they haven't been in for quite some time.
They're 10 points behind the Boston Bruins, Montreal Canadiens, and the Buffalo Sabres for a playoff spot. It doesn't appear, either, that any of the three teams will go on a massive losing streak anytime soon.
That means the Maple Leafs could be sellers — instead of buyers — at the trade deadline, which is just over a month away on March 6.
After Toronto fired assistant coach Marc Savard in early December due to the team's power play (and overall) struggles, Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving said he wasn't turning the page on the season. He wasn't ready to trade players for future assets.
At the time, Toronto was last in the Atlantic Division and second-last in the Eastern Conference. But there was more than enough time for a team to go out of kilter, and for the Maple Leafs to capitalize.
"You continue to monitor your team, what's going on in the league. You're having discussions with different teams. We're not here waving a white flag," Treliving said in a Dec. 23 press conference.
"If you can find somewhere to help your team, from bringing a player in or making a deal, obviously, that's what you look to do. But when you've got people who are underperforming, the best away to turn around is get people playing to the level that they can, and that's where a lot of the lion's share of the work is."
Since then, the Maple Leafs have gone 9-6-4, tied for the sixth-most points in that stretch. That's good, until you delve deeper into their most recent spell, where they've lost their last six games.
Treliving spoke on Thursday afternoon on TSN1050's OverDrive. He was asked again: Is there a timeline when he decides what the Maple Leafs will do — become buyers or sellers?
"We've got a three-week break for the Olympics. We come back and we've got a handful of games before the March 6 deadline. So you're always evaluating the short-term. You're evaluating the long-term," Treliving said.
"We look back here, this team for a number of years, the two years that I've been here, a number of years before, we're spending a lot of assets. You're trying to win. You get to the deadline, it's the last opportunity for you to make additions to your team. You're trying to do things, as all teams that are in that position are, to push your team over the top.
"We're in a different position than we've been in in the past. 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."
Furthermore, on Sportsnet's broadcast of the Toronto/Seattle game on Thursday night, Nick Kypreos and Elliotte Friedman indicated that the Maple Leafs might be sellers, even as early as before the Olympic break, depending on how the road trip shapes out.
"We assume it's business as usual. But the thought would be now, as you watch carefully tonight and through the weekend, they may be in a position to be selling," Kypreos said.
Friedman added, "The trade deadline is six days away, at least the pre-Olympic one. I think they're going to try and figure out, 'Okay, what's the value of our guys? What can we really do, and what's available to us?' And I think they've started to send that signal out."
Toronto has several pending unrestricted free agents in Bobby McMann, Scott Laughton, and Troy Stecher, who could fetch some assets on the trade market. There are likely other players the Maple Leafs could move if they really wanted to.
Everything boils down to how they play on this road trip. And thus far, it's not looking good.