More bad news for the Leafs on the Nylander front after meeting in Switzerland.

If you weren't concerned about how the situation between the Toronto Maple Leafs and young forward William Nylander was developing just quite yet, this may serve as the tipping point. 

Earlier this week we learned that Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas had personally flown to Switzerland for a face to face meeting with Nylander, a move that gave hope to many Leaf fans who were hopeful for a resolution sooner rather than later. By all accounts however at no point did either man discuss numbers during that meeting so it seems fair to suggest that no real progress was made in terms of negotiation and it sounds like it was more of an attempt on Dubas' part to give Nylander assurances that the Leafs do intend to keep him around for the long term. 

Now that may not make all that much sense to the casual observer but one of the major concerns for the Nylander camp has been the possibility of Nylander being traded the moment that he signs on the dotted line. It's no secret that the Leafs need to bolster their blue line if they wish to be serious contenders and Nylander on a team friendly deal would make one hell of a trading chip. For this reason, or at least partially due to this reason, Nylander has been unwilling to take a team friendly deal, one that he might not be so inclined to take were he playing on an entirely different team. Signing long term is all well and good but you don't want to end up being traded to a place where you don't want to play all the while making less money than you could have made if you held out. 

Unfortunately however it now seems that Dubas' efforts were largely futile as his plan of signing Mitch Marner, Auston Matthews and the aforementioned Nylander to long term deals appears to be dead in the water. A new report from Sportnset's National Hockey League insider Chris Johnston has revealed that the possibility of signing Nylander to a long term contract is effectively now non-existent. 

From Johnston:

The list of possible outcomes has been whittled down in the 118 days since Kyle Dubas met with Nylander’s agent, Lewis Gross, at the NHL draft in Dallas and travelled to Zurich to speak directly with the player this week.

Option B isn’t in the cards. There is no long-term contract coming here. The Leafs can’t find an AAV that both fits in with their long-term cap projections and is large enough to entice Nylander to sign for six, seven or eight years at this time.

Nylander could in theory sit out the remainder of the season and allow this stalemate to continue but Johnston does not believe that is a realistic option, believing instead that the young Swede will seek to earn a signing bonus in the NHL that will allow him to recoup some of the money he has already lost this season. That leaves the possibility of the Leafs signing Nylander to a short-term bridge deal, something that is less than ideal for Dubas and the Leafs, or trading Nylander, something Dubas has indicated he would rather not do. 

No way to tell which of the two will come to fruition at this point, but neither scenario is what the Leafs general manager had envisioned in his master plan.