Bobby McMann’s tenure with the Toronto Maple Leafs came to an end Friday as he was traded to the Seattle Kraken just before the trade deadline.

McMann, a pending unrestricted free agent, was moved for second- and fourth-round picks after playing the first 200 games of his NHL career with the Maple Leafs.

The 29-year-old winger admitted to Joshua Kloke of The Athletic that Toronto can be a difficult market to play in, with the noise only amplified when the team struggles, such as they have this season.

“Yeah, it can be. When things aren’t going well, it’s that much harder to play there, I think,” McMann told Kloke. “We’re all human, and I think all NHL players at times get put on a pedestal. Everybody lets things get to them to a certain extent, some more than others.

“When things aren’t going well, a lot of us are so critical of ourselves already that then when you start hearing it from things like media, people around town, the people that you aren’t as connected to, oftentimes you try and brush it off. But it’s hard because you’re human, and eventually it gets to you and it starts to wear on you. And you also understand the magnitude of the Leafs in that city and how important hockey is there. So I think a lot of the guys who were really big competitors wear that on their shoulders and wear the weight of the city on their shoulders a lot because of how important the sport is there.”

One-on-one with Bobby McMann:

• Why Maple Leafs contract extension talks stopped
• How the Leafs became “disconnected” and the season went wrong
• Inside emotional goodbyes
• Is playing in Toronto difficult?https://t.co/eU4Si0aQZk

— Joshua Kloke (@joshuakloke) March 11, 2026

The Maple Leafs, who moved McMann, Scott Laughton and Nicolas Roy, ahead of the deadline are on track to miss the playoffs for the first time since 2016. The team struggled early in the season, opening with a 5-5-1 record in October and sitting at 11-11-3 by the end of November. The tide seemed to turn in December as the Maple Leafs rose to 18-15-6 and then entered the Olympic break in February at 27-21-9, six points out of a playoff spot.

Three losses out of the gate after the Olympics sealed Toronto’s fate as sellers, with their moves looking further justified with team’s winless skid now at eight games.

“We had a lot of key players out of games early in the season,” McMann said of where things went wrong for the Maple Leafs. “And then when you go through those games, you’re not winning as much and then you get those players back and it’s like, ‘OK, we should be good.’ But sometimes, the team isn’t clicking where you want it to be,” he said. “Then you start trying to change things up a little bit. I think that’s where you start to run into problems, instead of trusting the system.”

“…Every team in this league is so exceptionally good that when you’re not working as a cohesive unit all the time and you’re disconnected, things can start to go south pretty quickly,” he added. “I think guys were maybe overthinking things a little bit too much, thinking about ‘OK, how do we get this back?’ rather than trusting the process of the game plan in place at start of the year. Let’s stick with what our systems and plan we’ve been working at for quite a long time. We’ve been working with these lines and combinations we had, to go through these situations.”

McMann is awaiting his work visa to make his Kraken debut. He has 19 goals and 32 points in 60 games this season, set to top his career-best 20 goals and 34 points in 74 games last year.

Seattle is currently sitting in the top wild-card spot in the Western Conference, equal in points with the Los Angeles Kings, who are outside the playoff picture and just two points ahead of both the San Jose Sharks and Nashville Predators.