What are some takeaways from the Maple Leafs locker cleanout day, particularly with regards to Auston Matthews and his desire to stay in Toronto? With the success down the stretch of the Columbus Blue Jackets, will Rick Bowness return behind the bench? What’s next for the Winnipeg Jets after a disappointing season? All that and more in the early edition of Insider Trading.
Gino Reda: Locker clean out day in Leaf land, what’s next for the Winnipeg Jets, and is Rick Bowness locked down long-term for the Blue Jackets?
We’re also getting confirmation from players who are willing to go to the Worlds for Team Canada and other nations around the world - details on these stories and more with our Insider, Darren Dreger.
Dregs, the Leafs played their final regular-season game this year, they had their exit meetings, and they had some interesting comments on their way out. What were your takeaways from locker clean out day?
Darren Dreger: Well just the level of buy-in, especially from the players that we’ve heard from post exit meeting with head coach Craig Berube.
Now, there’s still a level of uncertainty around the direction of this team - we don’t know who the next head of hockey operations is at this point in the MLSE search, but the players are committed to a re-tool, including captain Auston Matthews.
I think the message from Craig Berube to the core players, especially his captain, is ‘Look, we need full buy-in from you guys, and we need a team-first mentality.’
But that also means change, if you’re talking about a re-tool, and we’re not talking about just a couple of pieces, we’re talking about bigger, stronger players up front with a little bit more bite in their game.
You’re talking about a couple of defencemen added to the fold, including puck movers, so it’s not going to be an easy task for the people who are hired to head hockey operations, but it does seem like they’ve got buy-in, especially from Matthews.
Could that change, depending on the direction of leadership? Sure it could, but coming out of a disappointing end to the regular season, it does seem like the principal pieces of the Maple Leafs roster are definitely ready to roll.
Reda: Do you think we’re headed down a path similar to the Connor McDavid scenario where Matthews says ‘hey, I have two years left on my deal, show me what you can do over that period of time to prove that I should re-sign long-term here,’ which puts a lot of weight on Keith Pelley and company over who they should bring in and the message he has to deliver to the personnel, no?
Dreger: Matthews is committed to the direction of the team, and as long as it isn’t a full-scale rebuild - we don’t know what his position would be at that point and whether his position would change.
What we know is he’s under contract for the next two years, and after that all bets are off.
If management comes to Matthews or his agent and says ‘okay we have changed and we are going to officially rebuild and we’re moving this player and we’re moving that player and we’re trying to go a more traditional route in terms of that rebuild,’ at that point Matthews may say he didn’t sign up for that, but they’re not at that place yet.
I think fundamentally that would be a pretty big shift because from Keith Pelley and down, all we’ve heard from the Maple Leafs group is that they are focused on that re-toll, rather than a full-scale rebuild.
Reda: Let’s turn our attention to Winnipeg now. This time last year, the Jets finished with the best record in the league and locked up the Presidents’ Trophy, now they’re 12th in the conference, 26th in the league as they get set for their final regular-season game Thursday.
What do you see happening with that organization during the off-season?
Dreger: I think there’s a lot of work that needs to get done and I believe that general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff is going to be busy over the next few months.
This is an organization, when you look at it statistically, that grew accustomed to having very good regular seasons, so maybe the bar was set unrealistically high from training camp moving forward because they were never able to get their footing, they were never able to realize the expectation that was entrenched based on winning the Presidents’ Trophy last year.
So change might happen organically, there’s some free-agent players that Cheveldayoff is going to have to work with - for me it starts with Jonathan Toews.
What’s Toews’ future in the NHL, specific with the Jets? He’s a veteran player, we know his history, so they’re going to give him as much time as is needed for him to decide what his future looks like.
I expect that Toews will talk with his agent in the next couple of days. I don’t know that we’re going to have anything definitive there, but at least they’ll begin that dialogue.
Then you look at the younger players like Cole Perfetti, who’s a restricted free agent this off-season, so there’s a contract the team will have to work through, and they’re going to need some of these younger pieces to elevate their game.
But there will be adds to the roster, which is why I do expect Cheveldayoff to be a busy GM this year.
Reda: Rick Bowness led the Columbus Blue Jackets on an incredible tear since he took over in mid-January, and he had some public, pretty harsh comments about what he saw from his players over the last few games.
But you’re now getting an indication that Bowness may indeed be staying with the organization?
Dreger: I do, and TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun and Blue Jackets reporter Aaron Portzline have both been speculating that Bowness has agreed to a deal with the Blue Jackets.
I believe it’s a one-year deal, which would fit with where he’s come from, which is retirement, but the fire still burns in the belly with abundance, as we saw earlier this week with his end-of-season tirade based on how poorly the team played.
I also know based on meetings the general manager had with Bowness on Wednesday that the players believe in Bowness - his direction and his messaging - and I’m told that they liked playing for him and they want him back.
I think that was all part of the decision-making process by both the Blue Jackets and by the experienced Bowness here as well.
Reda: To your credit Dregs, you hinted on Tuesday that you thought we’d see John Tavares join Team Canada for the Worlds in Zurich next month, and Tavares made that official on Thursday.
TSN Hockey Insider Chris Johnston also confirmed some pretty big names playing for their countries as well.
Dreger: Yeah, and that is Sasha Barkov and Anton Lundell, both playing for Team Finland. As Chris talked about on Tuesday on Insider Trading, Barkov is obviously noteworthy because he hasn’t played all year due to an injury suffered in training camp with the Florida Panthers.
But this is a really good indication of how well he feels and how ready he needs to be for the start of next year’s training camp and the regular season for the Panthers.
So this gives him some really good competition, and he’s not going to enter a competitive environment as strong as the Men’s World Hockey Championship unless he feels as close to 100 per cent as he can.
So certainly a big name which should juice up the tournament and our coverage on TSN. I expect for Insider Trading later on Thursday we’ll also have more on Team Canada - not just Tavares, I think there’s some other big names that will be added to Team Canada’s roster, and we should have a better handle on what the coaching staff will look like as well.
