In general the Sunday before the trade deadline is not when things happen. As of time of writing the only rumoured event that could happen is a trade for Tyler Myers to someone. If he waives his NTC.

Now, of course, I will have jinxed this and all hell will break loose, but is there really much to break loose?

The Leafs are looking (eventually) to add players, and several people have mentioned the dearth of UFAs of quality, but let's just list them off here for fun.

All of them are here:

https://puckpedia.com/players/search?q=2025-26-ufa

Instead of sorting by points, I'm going to go by five-on-five TOI/GP. And I set the minimum at 12 which gets me 70 players I'm not listing all 70, just the top few and any interesting ones lurking below. Obviously the top section will be defender heavy:

  1. Jacob Trouba
  2. Rasmus Andersson
  3. Brett Kulak
  4. Troy Stecher (seriously)
  5. Mario Ferraro
  6. John Carlson
  7. Darren Raddysh
  8. John Klingberg
  9. Tony DeAngelo
  10. Timothy Liljegren
  11. Andrew Peeke
  12. Ryan Shea
  13. Brent Burns
  14. Jeremy Lauzon
  15. Nick Jensen
  16. Matt Grzelcyk
  17. Logan Stanley
  18. Carson Soucy
  19. Jamie Oleksiak
  20. Alexander Petrovic
  21. Radko Gudas
  22. Mason Marchment - the first forward on the list
  23. Jordan Eberble
  24. Ian Cole
  25. Jack Roslovic
  26. Mats Zuccarello
  27. Jake Bean
  28. Ilya Mikheyev
  29. Evander Kane

And then there's a lot of lower pairing defenders mixed in, so I'll look for some highlights in forwards now...

Nick Schmaltz, Alex Tuch, Bobby McMann (35th on the list and ninth for forwards at 13:41).

Now I'll find the next forward on this list younger than McMann...

Okay, close enough – also 29 is Kasperi Kapanen at 52nd.

To give Justin Bourne his due, this list is likely why he wrote a trade-focused article when talking about roster acquisitions. Now I'm imagining stem bolts being swapped for gold-pressed latinum.

I would actually pick Marchment and Kapanen out of that list, and maybe Teddy Bleuger at 31 years old and 55th on the list with 12:40 per game. Eeli Tolvanen is the only stereotypical skilled player. He's Nick Robertson only good on the power play. He's also only 26. And like most of that list above, he'll likely sign with his current team.

The Leafs scouts have their work cut out for them. There is, of course, RFAs to consider, who aren't a fit on their current team, so that's an option.

Hard to imagine finding a better than Maccelli name in this list though.

Now wasn't that cheerful?

Elliotte Friedman on HNIC said that the Leafs are expanding who they are considering trading. Now, I would caution against leaping to a giant conclusion here because I have read two other credible reports that there is interest in Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and that Brandon Carlo is considered to be available. So that's the level of "players with term" that is being discussed here so far.

That's the news so far.

Wait, you want something on the game last night?

From The Branches