A deal in place for Leafs to trade Barrie!?

Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas is going back and forth: he still hasn’t made up his mind on whether he will trade defenseman Tyson Barrie at the deadline. 

The story might be different now the the Leafs came out strong with a 4-0 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Thursday night. 

However, Bob McKenzie still believes the Leafs are getting calls on Barrie and his asking price as he explained on TSN's Insider Trading. They will move him they can fill his spot on the blue line before Monday’s 3pm ET deadline.

While that might sound like a last-minute deal, McKenzie believes the Leafs have held conversations with the Vancouver Canucks about a potential transaction. 

“When those teams called, the Leafs basically told those teams that were interested ‘Yeah, you know what? We would consider under the right set of circumstances trading Tyson Barrie .’ But the first thing you need to know, it’s not a sell-off for future considerations, it’s not like a lot of the rental deals. The Toronto Maple Leafs don’t want some magic beans that might pay off down the road. Listen, one of two things has to happen in order for Barrie to be traded. Either they have to get a defenseman coming back that makes them a better team right now because they still want to make the playoffs, or they have to get picks and prospects that they could immediately parlay into that mythical unicorn right-shot defenseman that they’re looking to play with Morgan Rielly. And so that’s the circumstance under which Barrie could move.

“Lots of teams interested, Vancouver is one of the teams that has spoken to the Toronto Maple Leafs and speaking of Vancouver, there’s been a lot of trade talk emanating out of Vancouver about defenseman Troy Stecher . Whether or not Stecher could be or would be part of anything with Toronto remains to be seen, but there’s a lot of moving parts there on the defenseman market even though a lot moved this week.”

The Maple Leafs, who are currently without Rielly and Cody Ceci on their blueline due to injuries, are believed to have a contract extension in place with fellow pending UFA defenseman Jake Muzzin. 

There are a lot of pieces to move around of the blue line options in Toronto and it seems like the possibility of moving Barrie out remains one.