On one hand, John Tavares holds a little less leverage than your typical pending-UFA star who can hit open market imminently. Usually a player in that position possesses all the cards. Tavares, however, has made no attempt to hide his hand, making it known his preferred outcome is to be a Toronto Maple Leaf for the remainder of his career.
Suffice it to say, the 34-year-old is not — or certainly not yet — adopting a hardline posture with his current employer.
On the Leafs’ side of things, GM Brad Treliving called himself a “huge John Tavares fan” at his year-end presser on Thursday, though did say the team was not far enough along with its internal plan-making to absolutely guarantee Tavares — or Mitch Marner, for that matter — would be offered a new contract before July 1.
While Marner may be a goner, it’s difficult to imagine — for a few reasons — that Toronto and Tavares won’t hold serious talks at some point. And if during those negotiations the player’s representation feels a desire to needle the team just a little a bit, their biggest bullet may be that if Tavares isn’t the Leafs’ second-line pivot next fall, the drop to whoever is could be sharp and scary.
The open market is not completely devoid of 2C options, but it’s difficult to argue any of them would be an upgrade on Tavares. And when you look at the trade market, it’s not as though a bevy of viable options come spilling in. Really, it’s easier to find players who — in a different universe — should be available via trade, but don’t appear to be in our current reality.
That’s worth remembering, not only if you’re a Leafs fan sick of the status quo, but also if you’re a backer of a couple other Canadian clubs examining the centre scene.
The Winnipeg Jets seem perpetually in search of a true second-line centre to skate behind Mark Scheifele and the need for help down the middle is more pronounced now that Adam Lowry will be out for around six months due to hip surgery.
Meanwhile, in Montreal, all the talk is about how the team can’t move forward without finding a 2C to help relieve Nick Suzuki’s burden at the top of the lineup.
Of course, for Toronto, it goes back to what Treliving referenced on Thursday when he said the DNA of the club must change. On the extreme end, some could see that as a willingness to bid farewell to both Marner and Tavares, opening up all kinds of cap space to play with.
To be sure, there are players you could pursue at other positions that would help. On the back end, Florida’s Aaron Ekblad could be a UFA come July 1, while we’ve already mentioned the possibility of Toronto chasing another longtime Flames defenceman — last year Treliving signed Chris Tanev — in Rasmus Andersson via the trade market.
But down the middle? That’s a different story.
Yes, we hear the Sam Bennett screams and, no doubt, the Panthers’ second-line centre seems — along with the rest of his team — constructed in a lab to succeed at this time of year.
But, at the end of the day, you’ve got to be skeptical about players actually leaving that team and no-tax state as free agents. It happens — Brandon Montour departed for Seattle last summer — but when Florida wants to move heaven and earth to keep a guy, it can usually do it. If the Cats prioritize Bennett over fellow pending-UFA Ekblad, the former could be a Floridian for eight more agitating years.
There’s also the reality that Bennett just posted a new career high with 51 points. While it’s easy to think Toronto should be single-mindedly focussed on the playoffs, it can’t completely lose sight of the regular season. And if you watch Marner’s 100 points and Tavares’ 38 goals saunter out the door and replace it with a 50-point guy, things might get more interesting during the 82-game dress rehearsal than Leafs fans care to consider.
Aside from Bennett, we could see a couple guys who just had their season end in Dallas hit free agency. Matt Duchene, who is only a year younger than Tavares, scored his one and only goal of the playoffs Thursday night in the 6-3 loss to Edmonton that ended the Stars’ spring, while the 33-year-old Mikael Granlund — though a gamer — is nowhere near the level of player Tavares is.
Either of those options sound like desirable moves? Even if you paired their signing with a splashy acquisition on the blueline, you’re still taking a pretty big hit up front.
You could try to change the mix with six-foot-four, 33-year-old Brock Nelson, but it’s still tough to say that former Islander is better than the former Islander Toronto already has in-house. Beyond that, it feels like Nelson is a natural fit for another team that can use help down the middle, that being the Wild club that plays in his home state of Minnesota.
As far as trades go, there’s a guy with championship pedigree and Leafs history who plays a distinct playoff-brand of hockey and is coming off a 35-goal season with a club that hasn’t made the post-season in three years. But 34-year-old Nazem Kadri is an important player on a Flames squad in transition, and it sure seems like Calgary, understandably, wants to keep him as a north star for the young guys coming up in that organization.
Dream even bigger and you could wonder about an all-time great who, at 37, might be thinking about one last run at the Cup with a new team. Makes sense on paper, but in the world we live in, Sidney Crosby — until we definitively hear different — has to be viewed as a Penguin for life, even if Pittsburgh is a bottom-feeder right now.
The Wild — for whatever reason — seem destined for a divorce from talented 23-year-old Marco Rossi, but the pending-RFA is a five-foot-nine guy who doesn’t suit Toronto’s needs. Bo Horvat from the Islanders? The Ontario kid could be a wonderful fit in Toronto, Winnipeg or Montreal, but there’s just no indication from the new management that a firesale is coming on Long Island. On the contrary, the Isles may go the other way, draft first overall in June, then turn around and try to land a big offensive fish on July 1.
Scour the league and you’ll see, finding a 2C — a tough chore at the best of times, given their importance — seems like an even taller task than usual at this particular moment in time.
And quite frankly, if a plug-and-play option did become available, how would the Leafs outbid other teams for that player’s services? Toronto isn’t exactly flush with prospects and doesn’t have a first-rounder for the next three years.
If Treliving is, indeed, a Tavares fan as he stated on Thursday, he might want to cement that notion by extending the hometown boy in the next few weeks. Because, in this centre market, getting Tavares at a bargain rate sure feels preferable to going out and paying full boat for anybody else.
