NHL Rumors: How Difficult Would it be for the Toronto Maple Leafs to Trade Mitch Marner?

Sportsnet: Jason Bukala on the Kyper and Bourne show when asked about how difficult it would be for the Toronto Maple Leafs to trade forward Mitch Marner.

** NHLRumors.com transcription

Nick Kypreos: “Tell me on a scale of one to 10, the difficulty the difficulty of moving Mitch Marner before his contract expires?”

Bukala: “I’m going to put it at about an eight.”

Kypreos: “Wow.”

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Bukala: “I think that can be really difficult. Here’s, here’s the reasons why, and you know, I’m just going to build it up behind the scenes.

So imagine that I’m on the other end. I’m the guy that gets the call or we get the call, okay, saying that we’re going to we’re exploring our options. ‘Do you guys have interest?’ The obvious answer is yes, ‘we have interest.’

Let me, let me kind of push that aside for a second, let, you guys know that like already, there’s only so many teams that can be in play here because what are you looking at? You’re looking at cap flexibility. You’re looking at hopefully draft capital, or you’re looking at prospect pool that has some depth pieces that we can add if they don’t have draft capital.

For me personally, it has to be a situation where the whole salary is taken on because I need, I’m going to lose the trade. Like the best player in the trade is Marner no matter what, no matter where he goes likely. So I already lose the trade at the NHL level. So I need to open up all that money to be able to spend on further assets.

So already that only, that takes away you know, never mind where Mitch wants to go play. That takes away, I don’t know off top my head. Absolutely eight, maybe more. You know, like right off the top.

So really, really difficult. So it’s gonna, and I gotta tell you something else, I, I’m always worried about when we get a phone call, and I just don’t like anything getting leaked out. And I guess it depends on who’s, who’s involved in whatever.

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But we live in this world nowadays that if something goes sideways with any type of conversation, there’s always that squeaky wheel it seems in every, every situation that we deal with in hockey, somebody without permission to speak, says something stupid to somebody and stuff starts leaking out. So that can really have an effect on your organization.”