Oliver Ekman-Larsson is day-to-day, still hunting his first point, and suddenly the name every Maple Leafs trade rumour keeps circling back to.
Toronto hits Colorado tonight with a 2-2-1 record and a blue line that looks a step slow. The Avalanche have already piled up 23 goals in four games.
And Ekman-Larsson might not even dress. He's listed day-to-day with an undisclosed issue, which tells you nothing and everything at once.
Five games in, the 35-year-old has no goals, no assists and a -1 rating. For a defenceman whose game was built on moving the puck, that's a quiet start getting louder.
The trade logic is simple enough. He carries a $3.5 million cap hit, a number rival front offices can absorb without much cap gymnastics.
Selling a scoreless veteran with a day-to-day tag is like listing a used car with the check engine light blinking. Somebody bites, just never at sticker price.
What Toronto wants back is the harder part. Who hands over a mobile, prime-age defenceman ready to push for top-four minutes in exchange for that?
Bobrovsky and Stolarz are paying for Toronto's leaky blue line
Sergei Bobrovsky sits at a .906 save percentage. Anthony Stolarz is at .904, and neither number is the root issue when the traffic in front of the crease keeps coming.
Toronto has allowed 15 goals in five games, and every one of those games was decided by a single goal. Thursday's 4-3 shootout loss in Vegas was the latest coin flip.
The blame doesn't stop at one guy. Darren Raddysh carries an $8.5 million cap hit and sits at a -3, which doesn't exactly help Toronto's leverage in any phone call.
Morgan Rielly has chipped in three assists but owns a -2. Chris Tanev and Jake McCabe are each +2, the steadiest numbers on the back end right now.
That's why Ekman-Larsson looks like the piece that moves. Rielly's deal is heavy, Tanev and McCabe are holding things together, and Troy Stecher's $1,350,000 hit won't fetch much of anything.
The human side stings. Ekman-Larsson is respected in the room, and Toronto's front office already showed with the Kirill Marchenko blockbuster that popularity doesn't buy protection.
Marchenko has four points through five games, including a power play goal. Matthew Knies, the price of that deal, fired three shots without a point in Columbus' shootout win over Pittsburgh last night.
If a bigger package comes together, prospect Tinus Luc Koblar keeps getting mentioned as the kind of add that brings a rival GM to the table.
Moving Ekman-Larsson is fine. Expecting him to headline a deal for a prime top-four defenceman is fantasy, and spending Koblar just to cover that gap would be a bad trade.
Jim Hiller's group heads to Utah on Tuesday after tonight's puck drop in Denver. Whether Ekman-Larsson is on the ice for either game might say more about his future than any rumour.
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Should the Maple Leafs trade Oliver Ekman-Larsson even if it means adding Tinus Luc Koblar to the deal?
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