When is it going to be time for Morgan Rielly and the Toronto Maple Leafs to go in a different direction?
Sportsnet 590 The FAN: James Mirtle on the JD Bunkis Podcast on the Toronto Maple Leafs and the idea of moving on from defenseman Morgan Rielly.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Bunkis: “Part of the reason why Rielly, though, is disappointing to me, is not just the play. It was the fact that going into the offseason, he was so clearly an obvious target for DNA change. That the front office came out here with all this bluster of, Well, we need to change DNA. We need to change DNA.’
And to your point about losing Marner or not replacing him, that was part of the failure of the plan. Morgan Rielly’s under contract still four seasons after this, 2030. He’s gonna be 35 years old, James, by the time this contract, actually 36 years old in the final year of his contract here.
Like, can you imagine what this is going to look like a few years from now? This is someone who has really relied on athleticism. The idea that the Leafs took their time with this player, and that they didn’t want to try to pressure to move off of him a year ago.
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When a team might have looked at it as a, you know, Kipper used the analogy yesterday, I watched him, of maybe a team looks at Morgan Rielly the way that teams looked at Seth Jones. Because there was a point in time where people looked at that Seth Jones contract and said, man, you can’t move for that guy. That’s way too much money. And yes, Chicago was in a way worse position than Toronto, so that gave him a little bit more grace.
But at this point, like people are, you’re talking about, hey, this offseason now, maybe Morgan Riley moves. For what? Who’s, who’s taking Morgan Riley up until his age 36 season at seven plus million dollars a year, unless you’re taking on another horrific contract?
Mirtle: “I mean, I think ideally you hope that it would just be a complete salary dump, and that you can do something with the money. And I wonder …”
Bunkis: “What asset are you attaching to that?
Mirtle: “Well, yeah, I don’t know. I mean, that’s what I said. I think the best hope is that you can just trade it clean. I mean, there’s gonna be a ton of teams with money, with the way the cap is going up. So, and there’s nothing available in free agency in terms of defense.
I suspect the leafs looked at it. They were trying to add another puck mover in the offseason, and they weren’t able to do it. I suspect they looked at it and just said, we don’t have enough guys on D. We’re having a hard time adding even like a depth piece to help us.
You know, they’ve gotten lucky with Troy Stecher coming in on waivers. I think they just felt like they, they couldn’t afford to just subtract Morgan Rielly and not do anything else.
But again, it’s kind of like the safe maneuver. And Leafs have gone the safe route again and again and again, and it’s burnt them, because everything catches up to you. And it’s caught up to them with Morgan Rielly.
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And, you know, it was kind of an exclamation point on where he’s at in his season, watching Matthew Schaefer, 18 years old, skate around him the way that he did. You know, it used to be that Morgan Rielly was a dynamic player.
I mean, never the greatest defensive player, but it used to be that he could get you out of his seat with the way he would move around the ice, and he just, he looks old. You’re talking about 35 or 36, he looks like one of the older defensemen in the league. And it’s robbed him of what his biggest strength was, what was his skating ability.”
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