William Nylander is Pulling a Le’Veon Bell

The Toronto Maple Leafs are an absolute wagon this year in hockey. But could you imagine this team’s potential if they were able to end this stalemate with one of their top 6 forwards? At 22 years old, Nylander has only played 2 full seasons in the NHL and notched 20+ goals in each and totaled 61 pts each year. Those are pretty damn good numbers from a young player who should still be a couple of years away from being in the prime of his career. But…..with such impressive number comes the demand for money and boy oh boy is Nylander demanding the cash. Reports have suggested that Nylander is looking for a long-term deal around $8.5 million a yr, while the Leafs are only willing to offer in the range of $6 million. As you can guess the holdout is still underway.

So here we are on November 14th and the 2 parties are nowhere close to a deal. Where is starts to get interesting is that Nylander has until December 1st to strike a deal or he will be unavailable to play for the Leafs or any other team in the NHL. Surely one of the parties will budge and this won’t end up like Le’Veon Bell and the Pittsburgh Steelers. While Bell will likely walk as a free agent at the end of the season from the Steelers, Nylander doesn’t have the same power as he is a restricted free agent for at least 4 more seasons. At what point do the Leafs begin to seriously listen to trade offers? The Leafs can’t take this past the deadline and have a player of his caliber sit out the whole year or even miss out on the haul that trading a player like Nylander could bring. In the end, I think Nylander gets dealt. In all honesty, if Nylander doesn’t want the chance to play with this talented of a team and try to win the city of Toronto their first Cup in over 50 yrs all while making $6 million per year, I wouldn’t want him anywhere near my team. If you’re a player on the team that is finally able to bring glory to Toronto again, you instantly become a legend and never pay for a meal or drink in Toronto for the rest of your life. Keep chasing that outlandish contract young buck, but there’s somethings that outweighs money and I’d have to say that winning a Stanley Cup in Toronto is one of them.

FYI: If David Pastrnak is only making $6.67 million per year, Nylander should consider himself lucky he got offered anything over $5 million