TSN: Pierre LeBrun when asked how long the Toronto Maple Leafs can hold off on not getting some help for their blue line.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Jay Onrait: “Brad Treliving is constantly working the phones whether the team has a need or not. He’s always working the phones. Now they actually do have a need. How much longer do you think he can actually hold out before he finally makes a deal here?”
LeBrun: “I mean, Jay, listen, by the way, thanks for having me on. This was already a need before the injuries piled up on the blue line. I mean, Brad Treliving went into the season already thinking ‘I have to upgrade this blue line whenever I can at some point before the March 8 trade deadline.’
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It probably adds more urgency, I mean, Mark Giordano was playing probably a bigger role than he should at his age. But nevertheless, he was playing an important role on this team and he goes down and it’s not going to be days. If I had to guess it’s probably going to be weeks in terms of his absence. We’ll see what the further testing reveals.
And so yeah, and you mentioned you know, already with Liljegren and Klingberg. Now, listen, the Leafs have been calling around because that’s what Brad Treliving does. We’ve reported before and that remains true that some of his old Calgary rear guards are, are of interest to him Chris Tanev, Nikita Zadorov (before he was traded to Vancouver) but obviously, he’s looking around the league elsewhere too.
Easier said than done. There’s something called a salary cap and one of the reasons you don’t see a lot of big trades in the first couple months of the year is because it’s so hard to move money. You know, you saw trade on Monday with Beauvillier going from Vancouver to Chicago. Well, guess what, the Hawks are one of the few teams in the league that could take a contract, right?”
Onrait: “Yeah.”
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LeBrun: “So you know the Leafs still want to upgrade the blue line. The Klingberg situation is where it could get interesting. He was supposed to see a specialist this week, and it was going to be determined whether or not he needs surgery. And if you need surgery, does that mean this season is over and if the season is over, I don’t have to tell ya, that means now they have cap money to spend so we’ll see where that goes.”
