Morning Coffee: Maple Leafs on list of surprise sellers ahead of trade deadline

The Colorado Avalanche aren’t slowing down.

You watch one game and think, “wow, they’re good”.

You watch five of their games and think, “this team might actually be unstoppable.”

Last night, the Avalanche crushed the Anaheim Ducks 5-1 for their fourth straight road win and league-high 18^th game with five or more goals this season.

Colorado improved to an NHL-best 41-10-9 – six points up on the Dallas Stars with one game in hand.

From as high as +1000 to +280, the Avalanche are the Stanley Cup favourite entering the NHL trade deadline.

What are the odds the league’s three best teams play in the same division?

With Mikko Rantanen, Roope Hintz, and Tyler Seguin all sidelined, the Stars cruised to a 6-1 win over the Calgary Flames last night to extend their win streak to 10.

Elsewhere, the Wild beat up on FanDuel’s favourite to win the Eastern Conference with a 5-1 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Matt Boldy extended his career-high point streak to 11 games with a season-high three assists, although I’m still disappointed that he couldn’t find the back of the net.

Colorado, Dallas, and Minnesota have 91, 85, and 82 points, respectively.

The Carolina Hurricanes (82) are the only other team in the NHL with more than 80.

What will that mean come playoff time?

While they are hands down the best team in the NHL, the Avalanche simply can’t afford to slip from first place in the Central Division standings.

If they did, they’d be guaranteed one of the toughest roads to the Stanley Cup Final with a first-round series against one of the top three teams in the NHL standings.

The good news is Colorado has the fourth-easiest remaining strength of schedule in the NHL, while Dallas will face the second-most difficult rest of season slate.

The Avalanche are -3000 to win the Central at FanDuel, followed by the Stars at +2500 and the Wild at +10000.

So much for thinking there was value backing Minnesota at +4000 coming out of the Winter Olympic break.

With two days before TradeCentre 2026, the NHL insiders have been busy keeping us up to date on the potential changes we could see around the league before the next meeting between the Avalanche and Wild on Sunday.

While the Stanley Cup contenders figure out how they can upgrade to challenge Colorado, there are several surprise teams in position to sell at the deadline.

That list of sellers includes a pair of teams that were expected to contend in the Eastern Conference.

Maple Leafs On List Of Surprise Sellers Ahead Of Trade Deadline

Remember the narrative from last year’s playoff series between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Florida Panthers?

There were a ton of people – including yours truly – who looked at the playoff picture and predicted the winner of that series would go on to reach the Stanley Cup Final.

The Maple Leafs had the home-ice advantage, jumped out to a 2-0 series lead, and appeared prime to knock off the defending Stanley Cup champions.

Instead, the Panthers clawed back to win that series in seven and went on to repeat as Stanley Cup champs.

10 months later, Florida and Toronto are on the outside looking in on the Eastern Conference playoff picture.

Both teams are trending towards selling at the deadline.

While the Panthers managed to keep their core intact, injuries to Matthew Tkachuk, Aleksander Barkov, and Seth Jones have been too much to overcome.

After three straight losses, Florida is 10 points out of a playoff spot with 21 games remaining.

The Panthers are +850 to make the playoffs at FanDuel – a 10.5 per cent implied probability.

Meanwhile, the Maple Leafs lost Mitch Marner in a sign-and-trade deal with the Vegas Golden Knights, acquiring Nicolas Roy.

The loss of Marner combined with various injuries to Auston Matthews, William Nylander, and others have left Toronto nine points out of a playoff spot with 21 games remaining.

The Maple Leafs are +2500 to make the playoffs at FanDuel – a 3.8 per cent implied probability.

While Florida can explore the trade market for its pending free agents, allow Barkov to fully heal, and enter the offseason with most of its Stanley Cup-winning core intact, the outlook in Toronto is much trickier.

The sentiment around the remaining core players seems to have soured somewhat in recent years.

The average age of the roster is 29.8 – fourth oldest in the entire NHL.

Meanwhile, the Maple Leafs have only five picks in the first three rounds of the next three NHL Drafts – tied with Colorado and Dallas for the fewest in the NHL.

So, where does Toronto go from here?

The Maple Leafs have surrendered the most five-on-five goals (152) in the entire NHL this season.

That’s a significant year-over-year decline from last season when they ranked third in that department.

Toronto has allowed the highest shots on goal per 60 minutes (30.1), the most rush shot attempts (17.4) per 60, and the fourth-most scoring chances (14.6) per 60.

Meanwhile, Matthews has gone eight straight games without a goal – the second-longest drought of his NHL career.

Nylander has 20 points in his last 13 games, but he’s missed 17 games this season.

John Tavares is currently third on the Maple Leafs with 50 points in 61 games, but he’ll turn 36 prior to next season.

Matthew Knies is the only other player on the roster with more than 35 points through the team’s first 61 games.

Sure, it’s easy to point out that the Maple Leafs need to be better defensively at even-strength.

The complicated part is figuring out how to improve defensively while avoiding a major step back offensively and navigating salary cap constraints.

Few expected both Florida and Toronto to be so far out of a playoff spot that they would be sellers at the trade deadline.

While the pieces are in place for the Panthers to bounce back with a return to health next season, how the Maple Leafs bounce back seems far more complicated.

With the franchise seemingly at a crossroads and the trade deadline just days away, Leafs Nation is hoping to get a little more clarity for what’s next in Toronto.

Hopefully, TradeCentre 2026 provides some much-needed answers.