Brendan Shanahan Sounds Like He Is Ready To Shake Up The Leafs

Sounds like the end of the "core 4" era is coming to an end and not a minute too soon. Another playoff failure. It does feel like the Leafs need more than a facelift. Just a brutal end to the year with Matthews and Nylander missing playoff games because of injury and Marner missing games due to just being missing. 

This formula clearly doesn't work. The Leafs knew that they needed to get deeper and have more jam in their top 9 so last summer they went out and convinced Domi and Bertuzzi to sign 1 year deals. They brought in Reevo to be that enforcer they needed. All of those changes seemed like good ideas. It ended with the same result. The Leafs already made one swift change

They've got to get the right type of guy behind the bench. They also need to move on from Marner. Marner has a full NMC (teams really need to stop handing these out like candy. They always make life difficult for the organizations)

Pretty scathing analysis from Servalli. I am very curious about Marner's state of mind. I wonder if he is ready to move on and will play ball because Colby is right. At the end of the day that NMC is a hammer. A reverse card in uno. I also wonder just how desperate Toronto is to get rid of him. His trade value has never been lower. Will they be willing to take pennies on the dollar just to clear the cap space? He's a flawed player, but the Leafs would still need to find a way to replace about 100 points. No matter which way Shanahan pulls he is kind of stuck. Chinese finger trap situation. 

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The Leafs will have cap space with Muzzin, Samsonov, Murray, Klingberg, Giordano, Brodie, Edmundson, Domi, and Bertuzzi all technically coming off the books (though I think they'd probably like to keep Edmundson and maybe Domi). Marner's nearly $11M added to that gives them a good amount of flexibility should they decide to go that route. I think it's possible that the Leafs could replace Marner's production in the aggregate. Maybe they're the ones who go for Kane and Stamkos. Those two would certainly bring a different type of culture to the forward group. Then try to get another goalie and help on defense by trading Marner. 

As usual, the Leafs are set to be the most intriguing team this summer. Money to burn and a culture to burn too.