{"id":519931,"date":"2026-03-07T07:40:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T07:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/519931\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T07:40:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T07:40:09","slug":"leafs-should-trade-matthews-but-their-addiction-to-being-a-contender-means-they-wont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/519931\/","title":{"rendered":"Leafs should trade Matthews, but their addiction to being a contender means they won\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Toronto Maple Leafs centre Auston Matthews (34) in action against the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Thursday.Brad Penner\/Reuters<\/p>\n

At this point, the smart play for the Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> is trading Auston Matthews. <\/p>\n

He is a good player, but he\u2019s not a winner. Not in Toronto, at least. He\u2019s had 10 years to figure it out. \u201cDiminishing\u201d would be the kind way to describe the team\u2019s returns on his watch. <\/p>\n

The next two Leafs seasons will be abysmal. How can one know that? Because a hockey team without prospects, without good draft picks, and without tradable assets it\u2019s willing to trade doesn\u2019t go from bad to good. It goes from bad to worse. <\/p>\n

At the end of those two seasons, Matthews will be out of a contract again. At that point, he\u2019ll either have become so badly Stockholm Syndrome\u2019d that he\u2019ll never leave, or he\u2019ll run screaming.<\/p>\n

Then what? Then you\u2019re where the Leafs are now, minus the means with which to improve the situation. <\/p>\n

NHL\u2019s best in the West load up on busy eve of trade deadline<\/a><\/p>\n

A smart team would convince Matthews to waive his no-trade clause over the summer and ship him south. Given his current profile in the United States, Toronto might be able to bootstrap the beginnings of a decent renovation on his value alone. If they don\u2019t, that profile and value are two more things being frittered away.<\/p>\n

Ambitious teams in rational markets would do that, but the Leafs cannot. Not because they lack the means, but because over the past 10 years they have become hooked on contending. <\/p>\n

On Friday, they were busy acting like contenders, asking too much for three guys they\u2019d already announced they wanted to be rid of. Dealing with the Leafs must be like going to a yard sale and finding out it\u2019s being run by Christie\u2019s. <\/p>\n

In the end, Toronto was able to trade Scott Laughton to LA for a third-round pick (that could become a second). Unfortunately, they paid a first-rounder and a prospect for him last year.<\/p>\n

You know what comes next, right? A winning streak. <\/p>\n

What the Leafs are left with is functionally the same team that was terrible this year, with zero ability to make substantial changes for next year. This is what happens when half of your bad team has some sort of no-movement clause. <\/p>\n

And yet, the Leafs will come into 2026-27 advertising themselves as contenders, because they have no other choice. <\/p>\n

Maple Leafs and Panthers become trade deadline sellers with playoffs likely out of reach<\/a><\/p>\n

In the sense that the Leafs use the word, contending isn\u2019t winning. Contending is a general sense that it\u2019s possible you could win, even if you never do and never will. Like Marlon Brando said, contending means you\u2019re a somebody. You matter.<\/p>\n

Do these Leafs feel like they matter? It\u2019s not going to stop them from making promises. Just wait till you get a load of the postseason pressers. The Leafs\u2019 decision makers are about to bury you with accountability. They\u2019ll need to bulk-order planks for all the people walking them. <\/p>\n

Obviously, nobody who is actually to blame is getting clipped. You think this is a coaching problem? When you\u2019ve had three coaches with three styles with three decent runs and one result, it\u2019s not the coaching.<\/p>\n

Everyone who doesn\u2019t have their own TV commercial is getting shot out of town in a cannon. They\u2019ll be replaced by another bunch of guys who were shot in Toronto\u2019s direction by someone else\u2019s artillery. <\/p>\n

Then it\u2019s time to swap out one Scott Laughton for another, and blame them both for not being Jean B\u00e9liveau. Eventually, we will be debating the merits of convincing Morgan Rielly that he should shed his attachment to material things and join a Buddhist monastery. <\/p>\n

All of this, every trade for a minor cog that\u2019s treated like the arrival of Babe Ruth, every circular argument about goaltending and the value of experience, is picking around the edges of the issue. At the core of it is Matthews. He is the key to this doom cycle. <\/p>\n

Without him, the Leafs can\u2019t kid themselves into thinking they\u2019re a contender, never mind their customers. They\u2019d have to start over. <\/p>\n

With him, things can continue on in this way for years. He\u2019ll be Toronto\u2019s (Stanley Cupless) Sidney Crosby. <\/p>\n

The first thing is hard, the second thing is easy.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t blame the Leafs for choosing easy. It\u2019s what the market is telling them it wants. <\/p>\n

A tank requires rapid-onset apathy. Fans must have lost interest, and revenue must be trending the wrong way. That\u2019s what spurs any business to radical change.<\/p>\n

Right now, Toronto would buy tickets to a public hanging if you put a Leafs logo on the gallows. The city likes this team good, but they also like it bad. It gives everyone something to fixate on that feels important, but is in no danger of being so.<\/p>\n

Matthews helps in this because he is a special player in one particular regard \u2013 his ability to absorb all the emotion Toronto throws at him. The Leafs have had plenty of other stars who\u2019ve ping-ponged between being loved and hated, but has any ever accepted it with such docility?<\/p>\n

Critics say Matthews doesn\u2019t care, but if that\u2019s true, then he doesn\u2019t care about any of it. Winning, losing, adulation, critique. He walks through it all with that drawling, half-lidded way he has of speaking, never seeming to internalize any of it. But surely it must take some sort of toll. Nobody\u2019s that detached.<\/p>\n

Trading Matthews would not just be an act of positive destruction. It\u2019d be a kindness. The guy\u2019s done his time. It was well worth a try, but it hasn\u2019t worked out and it\u2019s not going to. No need to start tossing clothes out of windows. This can be an amicable split. The Leafs could explain it to him that way.<\/p>\n

But it can\u2019t happen because Toronto, currently ranked 21st in the NHL and dropping like space debris, are contenders. Just ask them. It may take a while, but they\u2019ll convince you. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Toronto Maple Leafs centre Auston Matthews (34) in action against the New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519932,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,2922,82,8023],"class_list":{"0":"post-519931","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-noastack","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-topstory"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519931"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519931\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}