Photo credit: Dan Hamilton Imagn Images
The math doesn’t care about your feelings, and right now, the math says the Toronto Maple Leafs are finished and should look towards next season.
With playoff odds plummeting to a dismal 7.2%, the writing isn’t just on the wall. It is spray-painted in neon red.
We are past the point of “running it back.”
Brad Treliving needs to sell. And not just the scrap metal. He needs to move the guys who actually matter.
That brings us to Bobby McMann and Scott Laughton.
These aren’t just bodies. They are pending UFAs with real value in a market starving for grit and depth.
But here is the twist. You don’t have to lose them forever.
Mike Johnson went on TSN’s *First Up* and laid out a blueprint that is so crazy it just might work. He proposed a “boomerang” strategy that exploits the human side of the business.
You sit the player down. You look him in the eye. And you cut a backroom deal.
“What I would do, I would have a negotiation with say Scott Laughton and say ‘we can give you five years at $5M, but we’re going to trade you for a first rounder and this is going to be waiting for you on July 1st and hopefully you’ll want to come back to Toronto,” Johnson said. “The team you come back to will be better off for you going on a playoff run somewhere else.”
You get the first-round pick from a desperate contender. You let the player chase a Cup. And then you welcome him home in July with a fresh contract.
Check the numbers yourself at [https://www.marqueur.com/gemini_nhl.htm](https://www.marqueur.com/gemini_nhl.htm) and you will see why this makes sense.
This is the ruthless creativity the Leafs lack
Bobby McMann is the perfect test case for this.
He is cheap, he hits, and he can score. A contender pays a premium for that.
If you trade him now, you stock the cupboard. If you have a handshake deal to bring him back, you lose nothing but two months of meaningless hockey.
Scott Laughton fits the same mold.
He has been around the block. He knows the business. He knows that sticking around for a death march in March does nobody any favors.
Can you trust a GM’s word? Can the GM trust the player not to fall in love with his rental team?
But standing pat is negligence. Losing them for nothing in July is incompetence.
This “catch and release” strategy is the only way to salvage a lost season.
Johnson is right. It would be negligent not to try.
Previously on Toronto Hockey Daily
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