{"id":480800,"date":"2026-03-02T13:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T13:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/480800\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T13:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T13:05:12","slug":"maple-leafs-have-a-30-million-morgan-rielly-problem-before-nhl-trade-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/480800\/","title":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs have a $30 million Morgan Rielly problem before NHL trade deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maple Leafs have a $30 million Morgan Rielly problem before NHL trade deadline<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Morgan Rielly has not done well lately to instill future confidence in the Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a>‘ fanbase.<\/p>\n

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The viral slip-and-slide<\/a> was the worst moment, but his overall play as a defenseman has not impressed in this bumpy season for Toronto. And his contract makes that a problem.<\/p>\n

Maybe in a different scenario, it’d be easy for the Maple Leafs to trade Rielly before the Friday deadline and just move on.<\/p>\n

His long-term deal makes that a lot tougher, though.<\/p>\n

Rielly is owed an average of $7.5 million through the 2029-30 season. That’s a total of $30 million over the life of the contract beyond this season.<\/p>\n

That’s a lot of money for a defenseman that isn’t a sure thing to keep getting better.<\/p>\n

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MORE:\u00a0Elias Pettersson breaks silence on Canucks benching before deadline<\/a><\/p>\n

Rielly hasn’t been one of the more rumored trade candidates for the Leafs before the deadline. They’ve got a handful of expiring contracts that are the clear and obvious targets for other teams.<\/p>\n

But at least some in the Toronto fanbase have speculated about moving on from Rielly simply because he hasn’t quite lived up to the expectations.<\/p>\n

Maybe he’d thrive with another team thanks to a change of scenery.<\/p>\n

But there’d be a big risk for an acquiring team that Rielly would end up looking a bit overpaid and not be worth the price.<\/p>\n

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That might mean the Maple Leafs are stuck with him. And if that’s the case, they’ll just have to hope his play improves sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n

More NHL news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs have a $30 million Morgan Rielly problem before NHL trade deadline originally appeared on The Sporting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5106],"tags":[894,2318,5,20,5172,885,4,66,31,5171],"class_list":{"0":"post-480800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-maple-leafs","8":"tag-canucks","9":"tag-elias-pettersson","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-maple-leafs","12":"tag-mapleleafs","13":"tag-morgan-rielly","14":"tag-nhl","15":"tag-toronto","16":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","17":"tag-torontomapleleafs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116159730542388607","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}