Photo credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images
We know the price for Bobby McMann and the Toronto Maple Leafs, but the tricky part comes wth how they are able to actually get what they want without losing value.
As the Toronto Maple Leafs settle in for a couple of weeks to get some much needed rest (well most of them), it becomes now a question of how the team is going to approach the trade deadline this upcoming March.
If the team doesn’t capitalize on their high value assets, they risk losing them for nothing come this summer and with no guarantees to re-sign them; that’s only going to make the fan backlash louder and swifter than ever before.
Toronto won’t get their picks unless they go searching
It’s especially important that they get the best possible package if they decide to trade Bobby McMann, and with reports that the team feels he is worthy of a first round pick, that would be a huge consolation prize to losing the speedy winger.
Though Elliotte Friedman points out that isn’t going to be as easy as it sounds, and there’s one real issue with the Maple Leafs’ desire for a first round pick: No interested teams have one.
Toronto is looking for a first-rounder for Bobby McMann. Big and fast, can see the possibility.
One challenge for 2026: Colorado, Dallas, Edmonton, Minnesota and Vegas have already traded their first-rounders. (Carolina dealt theirs, but got another one from Dallas.) Ottawa doesn’t have one, and is unlikely to get it.
That limits potential partners. Tougher, but not impossible. McMann’s a good player.
While he notes it’s not impossible, it would need to come down to Carolina or perhaps another team who comes out of the woodwork like Anaheim (who does own their 2026 first round pick).
Maple Leafs management are failing to read the room
The team and McMann are also miles apart on an extension, and the fact he can make nearly triple what he does now this July; there’s an onus to sell high now.
But if the team is prevented from doing so for the sake of losing their playoff revenue and extra ticket sales, then what?
Are they going to hope that things turn around, they make a miraculous playoff run, and McMann extends for cheap a la John Tavares and Matthew Knies?
That’s a lot of moving parts for a player who has only really broken out over the past two seasons and would be classified as a ‘late-bloomer.’
Toronto’s past speaks volumes for their current lack of a game plan
This is a team that hemorrhages picks and prospects for the sake of winning now, take a look at what they’ve done recently. Heck, you have guys they got rid of like Mason Marchment and Jared McCann — guys who have multiple 20+ goal seasons.
Then you look at this year. Unless they tank (which as stated above is not an option), then their 2026 pick falls to the Bruins; and they already lost Fraser Minte too. All of this for Brandon Carlo, who has been good but is even being thrown around in rumours as of late and hasn’t exactly lived up to expectations.
This organization lacks exactly that, an organized front. When is the last time we as Maple Leafs fans and loyalists felt that the team really had a direction? The first couple years of the Shana-plan? 2004? 1967?
We haven’t heard anything out of the upper management about the state of the team despite numerous chances to admit their faults and make them right. Instead, it was just thumbs up all round so long as the bottom line looks good.
Maybe they’re worried about getting burned, or maybe the package just wasn’t right — but something’s gotta give.
If the Maple Leafs are firm on their asking price for Bobby McMann, then it’s going to be hard for them to get what they want not only due to a lack of available picks, but their own organization may be holding them back.
It’s an ugly situation that will get worse if Toronto decides to do nothing, and walks away empty handed yet again.
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The Leafs’ Bobby McMann price is set, now comes the tricky part
Should the Maple Leafs trade Bobby McMann for less than a first round pick?