The Toronto Maple Leafs front office said everything would be on the table this offseason in terms of breaking up the core four. However, that hasn’t come to fruition yet and one trade pitch sees the team dealing Mitch Marner to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
Trade pitch sends Mitch Marner to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
With Marner entering the final year of his six-year $65.4 million deal, he has been the subject of trade rumors. The website PuckPedia has a new tool called PuckGM that lets users create their own trades, and one user proposed a multi-player deal for Marner to be dealt to the Penguins.
Maple Leafs get:
- Lars Eller
- Brayden Yager
- 2025 first-round pick
- 2026 first-round pick
Penguins get:
- Mitch Marner ($5.5 million retained)
The proposed trade is interesting as Toronto would unload Marner to the Penguins for more of a futures deal. The Maple Leafs would acquire top prospect Brayden Yager who Pittsburgh selected in the first round of the 2023 NHL draft. Along with Yager, Toronto would get the Penguins first-round pick in the next two years.
Then, the Maple Leafs would add Lars Eller who is a solid third-line center for the Maple Leafs and can help add depth to the bottom-six in Toronto.
As for the Penguins, they get a skilled winger in Marner as Pittsburgh is looking to try to take one last run at a Stanley Cup with their veteran core of Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and Erik Karlsson.
Marner would be projected to play on the top line with Crosby and would help boost the Penguins’ power play which ranked 30th in the NHL last season.
