Things just got a lot worse for the Canadiens after very bad new development
Matthew Knies and Martin St. Louis are no longer part of the same trade story after Elliotte Friedman said the Leafs-Canadiens deal is dead.
That is the new gut punch for Toronto. The blockbuster was already painful once people learned it was missed by a minute at the deadline. Now Friedman says there is no circling back.
Kyle Bukauskas asked the question straight on 32 Thoughts: with this new Leafs regime, could the club revisit that trade? Friedman's answer was flat. No. He does not believe it is happening, and he thinks that deal is gone now.
That matters because this was not some fake rumor thrown into June. Friedman had already explained the trade fell apart because it was submitted at 3:01 ET, past the deadline.
So the story has changed. It is no longer about paperwork ruining a blockbuster. It is about Toronto choosing not to reopen the door at all.
That leaves Knies right back in the center of the Leafs' offseason, and that is a big swing for a front office now led by John Chayka. Markerzone reported Toronto's hockey operations reset put Chayka in charge, which makes this his call now as much as anybody's.
Toronto also has no room to treat this lightly after a 32-36-14 finish and 78 points. When a team ends up last in the Atlantic, every failed deadline move comes back with more weight.
Elliotte Friedman: No; I don't believe it will happen, I think that deal is off the table now
- 32 Thoughts (6/5) "
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Very bad news just dropped for the Canadiens and fans won't like it
Because Montreal is not chasing Toronto anymore. The Canadiens finished 48-24-10 and reached 106 points, which makes the idea of Knies landing in that lineup feel even heavier from the Leafs side.
Martin St. Louis already has a faster, more dangerous group than he did a year ago. Adding a winger like Knies would have pushed even more pressure onto Toronto inside the division. That is exactly why this rumor hit so hard in the first place.
There is another angle here, too. Once Friedman says the deal is dead, Toronto loses the fallback idea that maybe the new regime will clean up the old mistake.
That means the Leafs have to live with both sides of it. They missed the deadline window, and now they are not reopening the file.
For Knies, that keeps his value high inside Toronto whether the club sees him as a building block or a chip in another hockey trade. For the Canadiens, it closes a path to a player who clearly interested them enough to get all the way to the line.
And for the Leafs, that is the bad news that just landed. Matthew Knies is no longer the trade they almost made. He is the reminder of the one they did not finish.
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YESTERDAY
JUNE 6, 2026
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| G | A | PTS | ||
| Mitch Marner | 3 | 1 | 4 | |
| Tomas Hertl | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Jordan Staal | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Shea Theodore | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Sebastian Aho | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Brayden McNabb | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Taylor Hall | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jordan Martinook | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Andrei Svechnikov | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jackson Blake | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jack Eichel | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Brett Howden | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Seth Jarvis | - | 1 | 1 | |
| William Karlsson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Eric Robinson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Jaccob Slavin | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Logan Stankoven | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Frederik Andersen | - | - | - | |
| Rasmus Andersson | - | - | - | |
| Ivan Barbashev | - | - | - | |
| COMPLETE STATS | ||||