The Florida Panthers are poised to hoist Lord Stanley as early as Saturday night in Edmonton.
In stunning fashion, delayed flights and all, Paul Maurice’s bunch marched into Rogers Place on Thursday night and pulled out an impressive 4-3 victory to grab a commanding 3-0 series lead.
For all intents and purposes, this one’s all but over. The only thing left to figure out is when’s it going to end.
And that’s where the conversation started on the Friday edition of Leafs Morning Take. Naturally, we tried to draw some correlations to the Maple Leafs and what the franchise needs to do to get to Florida’s level. When the Cats acquired Matthew Tkachuk two summers ago, everything changed for that franchise, and now they’re on the precipice of winning it all. After that, we hit on Laurence Gilman’s departure from Toronto quickly as well.
Presented by Greta Bar YYZ, we investigated what a Vegas-Toronto match could look like in a potential Mitch Marner trade. Shea Theodore, Alex Pietrangelo, William Karlsson, Nicolas Hague, Nicolas Roy, and Logan Thompson were a few names brought up. Any time a marquee name is available, it always feels like the Golden Knights are around it. They fly by the seat of their pants —that’s for sure.
Meantime, we also discussed Frank Seravalli’s updated trade targets list. Surprise, surprise —Marner remains No. 1. Furthermore, Martin Necas and Jacob Markstrom are a few other players who could be on the move over the next few weeks. Additionally, we also dissected Frank’s buyout candidates list. To be fair, the list isn’t very enticing —unless you’re interested in Pierre-Luc Dubois and his baggage. That said, there’s always a few buyouts that come out of nowhere, so we’ll see what happens.
After that, thanks to Wendy’s, we played our interview with Leafs forward Noah Gregor from earlier this week. We talked about his first season in Toronto, his future, and we even asked a few questions about the Amazon docu-series that begin filming midway through the season.
That’s it for another week of Leafs Morning Take. Join us on Monday at 11 AM ET as we break down Game 4 of the Stanley Cup Final. The series will either be over, or we’ll be looking ahead to Game 5 in Sunrise. It’s gut-check time for the Oilers.
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