Although the NHL’s regular season has been suspended because of the novel coronavirus, the NHL is taking action to do its work. Specifically, on May 1 NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daily sent an email proposing a June NHL Entry Draft that would occur before the 2019-20 season would be completed and outlining why the NHL would like to hold that draft prior to the season’s end.
In this post, I’d like to offer how that impacts the Maple Leafs. There’s one issue that needs to be resolved prior to the Draft, and that’s the resolution of trade conditions the team was involved with.
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Were Trade Conditions Met, or Weren’t They?
Specifically, the Maple Leafs engaged in trades during the 2019-20 season that had conditional picks attached to them. Those conditions would have been measured when the regular-season ended; however, it hasn’t ended. So, what now?
Without a clear indication about how teams or players fared during the regular season that would be cut-and-dry at the end of the season, how should those conditions be measured? Were those conditions met or were they not? And, because the season now sits incomplete, the NHL has proposed to provide solutions to these trade conditions brought on by these deals prior to the 2020 NHL Entry Draft can be completed.
Specifically, the NHL will temporarily “rule” on these conditions; however (and this seems fair), the NHL also proposes to give a period of time (a week) to allow each of the teams involved a chance to negotiate their own solution or to – if they can’t – accept the NHL’s.
Two Specific Maple Leafs Trade Implications
Trade Implication Number One: The Patrick Marleau Trade
The Maple Leafs first that comes with a condition was the trade completed by general manager Kyle Dubas last June where the team sent Patrick Marleau to the Carolina Hurricanes in a salary-cap dump. As Maple Leafs fans well know, the team “paid off” the Hurricanes (who had the salary-cap space to make it happen) to take Marleau and his $6.25 million salary-cap hit for the 2019-2o season.
The condition tied to this trade was that the team also sent a conditional first-round pick and a seventh-round pick in the 2020 NHL draft and received a 2020 sixth-round pick from the Hurricanes.
Here’s how it was set up, and here’s how it worked out. The trade condition was that, if the Maple Leafs’ 2019-20 regular-season record allowed them to have a draft pick in the top 10 of the 2020 draft, they’d keep that pick and Carolina would receive their 2021 pick instead.
Was that condition met? The answer is that, if the regular season were not considered over, the answer is that that condition was not met. When the regular season was suspended on March 12, the Maple Leafs had 81 points, and that put them in 12th spot in the NHL; and, the team’s point- percentage would have slid the Maple Leafs to pick in the 20th spot. That condition would give the 2020 draft pick to the Hurricanes.
Because at the 2020 trade deadline, the Hurricanes traded this draft choice to the New York Rangers for Brady Skjei, the Rangers would receive the draft pick that would have been sent to the Hurricanes for Skjei.
Trade Implication Number Two: The Jack Campbell Trade
The Maple
Leafs also made a key trade in February that sent Trevor Moore to the Los
Angeles Kings for goalie Jack Campbell and winger Kyle Clifford. The condition added to that
trade was a conditional 2021 third-round pick that would have been upgraded to
a second-round pick if either Clifford re-signed with the Maple Leafs or if the
Maple Leafs made the playoffs this season and Campbell won six regular-season
games.
However, Campbell did not win six regular-season
games because, when the regular season was suspended, his record was only 3-2-1.
Even if the season were to continue, with only a single set of back-to-back
games left on the team’s schedule it would have been unlikely that Campbell
would start enough games of the 12 remaining games to make that condition an
issue for the Maple Leafs.
So, if the June draft happens as people suspect it might, Maple Leafs fans should expect general manager Dubas and the Kings’ general manager Rob Blake converse soon about this condition. Given that Campbell won’t meet this condition, it seems likely the two would simply choose to assign the trade condition to Clifford’s decision about re-signing after the season.
It seems so complicated somehow, doesn’t it? And, given the up-in-the-air nature of the season’s conclusion, who knows what will happen?
Related: Who Made TSN’s Toronto Maple Leafs All-Time Maple Leafs Team?
