Insider proposes a big trade between the Flyers and Leafs.

It will be interesting to see just how Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas is going to navigate some of the challenges ahead of him in this upcoming offseason but one thing is certain, he will not be short on options.

There has been a ton of talk regarding just how the Maple Leafs will deal with the cap crunch head of the 2019 - 2020 National Hockey League regular season and for good reason. The Maple Leafs have a number of players entering free agency with the foremost among those being star forward Mitch Marner. It is almost certain that the Maple Leafs will have to shed some salary over the summer just to get cap compliant, but one NHL insider believes he knows a way the Leafs could solve that issue and another one of their problems in one fell swoop.

This week Philadelphia Flyers insider Sam Carchidi touched on the fact that he feels the Flyers must acquire a 2nd line center in order to provide former 1st round draft selection Nolan Patrick with better match ups on the 3rd line. It is quite clear that Carchidi feels Patrick can still unlock the potential that saw him selected 2nd overall at the 2017 NHL Entry Draft but feels that Patrick should be bumped down to the 3rd line in order to give him a chance to continue to develop while being relatively protected in terms of the match ups he faces on a nightly basis. 

So how does he feel the Flyers can do that? Well Carchidi listed a number of options that could fill that void for the Flyers come next season, but one of the most interesting ones involved the Toronto Maple Leafs. As I mentioned before the Leafs need to shed salary this summer, but the Leafs also have another problem on their hands at the moment. You see the Maple Leafs were largely without one of the core players in their first round series against the Boston Bruins and for the second straight year no less. This of course was the result of the selfish and undisciplined suspension taken by Nazem Kadri, a suspension that has many believing that the Maple Leafs need to move on from the undisciplined forward. 

Here is Carchidi's take:

The Maple Leafs will likely trade a key player to free cap space to sign Marner. The 6-0, 192-pound Kadri, who hurt Toronto by getting suspended during the playoffs in each of the last two seasons, is a candidate to be moved. From the Flyers’ perspective, it might be the perfect time to roll the dice on a player they call “Naz.” Toronto’s management is down on him, and he is coming off a 16-goal year, the lowest output in any of his seven full seasons. He plays on the edge, had consecutive 32-goal seasons in 2016-17 and 2017-18, and has a very reasonable cap hit ($4.5 million annually for the next three seasons).

The Flyers’ upper management wants the team to be bold in the off-season. Dealing for Kadri would fit that description.

There are however quite a few reasons the Leafs would want to hang on to Kadri this summer as well. The veteran forward is undeniably talented and he plays one of the most valuable positions in the NHL and players it well. Additionally that team friendly cap hit that Carchidi mentioned is extremely sexy to a cap team like the Toronto Maple Leafs and it is very hard to imagine a world in which they replace Kadri's production for the same price or less. Last but not least Kadri is coming off the worst goal scoring campaign of his NHL career and has that ugly playoff suspension hanging over his head as well, meaning his value is likely at an all time low at the moment. 

That being said, the Flyers do have some young defensemen in their system and if they could fill a need for the Maple Leafs on the blue line this one is not outside the realm of possibility.