Daily Faceoff Live: Who is searching for an early trade?
On Friday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live, Tyler Yaremchuk and Matt Larkin take to the #AskDFO inbox and discuss which teams could make an early trade.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Let’s move it along to our Daily Faceoff inbox question, today’s question is #AskDFO, which team is most in need of an early season trade to shake things up?
Matt Larkin: Well I hate to be Mr. Clickbait and steer it to “how does it affect the Leafs?” but I just think this is a team that really does need a trade right now to shake things up. Especially if you look at the heat on the seat of head coach Sheldon Keefe. You look at the relationship with general manager Kyle Dubas in Toronto, I don’t think he will want to pull the trigger on firing Sheldon Keefe too soon because there’s a kinship there and I think Dubas first before going that route would want to improve the team with a trade.
Of course, we know Jake Muzzin is out, and Justin Holl is feeling those boo birds. So, I’m wondering about a possible trade for a defenseman. You could go big, you could look at Jakob Chychrun if he’s getting healthy soon enough, that might require sacrificing someone like Nick Robertson. Making a big move like that, I mean hey, he’s being scratched right now anyways, if you aren’t playing Nick Roberson you may as well trade him. The other route is maybe something like a player looking for a change of scenery on a team that’s also scuffling. Matt Dumba is a guy that I have liked for the Leafs for a long time. He’s got a versatile game, you can put him on the powerplay, he can play a physical game, he’s on an expiring deal, and with Muzzin on LTIR, the Leafs have more cap space than they previously had. So, I am saying the Toronto Maple Leafs trade for a defenseman ASAP.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Interesting with Matt Dumba, I thought you were going to go a little bit lower and you were going to hit like a P.O. Joseph or someone who’s almost on the waiver wire as a buy-low candidate. As for me, I’m going to go with the Washington Capitals. This is a team that is so banged up. We now know that Connor Brown isn’t going to be back for the entire season so they do have that LTIR money and they should be looking to make a splash and grab a top-six forward. Things aren’t going great for the Caps right now, they’re 5-5-2 and with these injuries, you wonder if they can even keep up with that .500 pace. I think they need to go grab a forward and they’ve got to do it quickly.
Matt Larkin: That’s interesting and I wonder because of that cap space with Brown off the books and of course Tom Wilson still on LTIR as well as Nicklas Backstrom, you have a fair amount of flexibility. So, are you thinking you go for a big fish? Are you looking at a Patrick Kane? The reason I say someone like Patrick Kane is because it’s right-wing, that’s where the vacancy is right now on the Capitals and that’s where they need help, especially on the first line.
Tyler Yaremchuk: I don’t know if you go for a big fish. I know on TSN the other day they were talking about maybe Montreal would be a fit with like a Drouin or Hoffman or something like that. I think that’s more the direction you go, I threw this idea out to Frank (Servalli) and he kind of went like, “with what? They don’t have a ton of assets they can move. It’s basically mid-round picks and things like that.” So I think unfortunately for Washington you can’t go big game hunting, you probably just have to check down a little bit and check what’s available.
Matt Larkin: I think that’s fair, they are sort of a team that can be the victim of their own success in that they just don’t really have a stocked prospect cupboard. You have sort of B-level guys like Hendrix Lapierre, and Connor McMichael. You don’t have that major blue chip to dangle so you can bring in a key name.
You can watch the full episode here…