Rumor: Leafs and Preds to make monster deal?

The famous three-way trade that didn't happen Friday night is still a headline on Sunday - for those who missed it, Matt Duchene was nearly traded to the Ottawa Senators, while Kyle Turris was just about sent to the Nashville Predators, with Colorado getting a haul of high picks and prospects.

The trade fell through, likely because of Joe Sakic. An interesting tid bit of this story is that Colorado was trying to acquire Matthias Ekholm from the Predators - one of their top defensemen.

Reporter Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun suggests that if Ekholm's name is flying around out there, that Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Lou Lamoriello could be all over making a deal happen there.

A deal for a player of Ekholm's magnitude would surely cost the team one of their young stars such as Mitch Marner or William Nylander. Such is the price to pay for talent like Ekholm's. Alternatively, a sign-and-trade deal involving James van Riemsdyk as the centerpiece of a bigger package going to Nashville could be a possibility.

Any way you shake it, it would be a huge deal. David Poile hasn't shied away from making such deals. One only needs to think of the Subban-Weber deal, or the Johansen-Jones trade.