Latest On Matthews & Nylander As Time Ticks And Urgency Rises

But I am going to start with that, which is, man, we hit free agency and it was every day that goes by without William Nylander signing an extension
is closer to a trade. And Matthew's deal is basically on the doorstep. And then neither of them happened.

You know, Matthew's will be in Toronto relatively soon and the guys will start skating before training camp. And in that period, I could see them getting something done. And that's, again, that's not me breaking news or anything. I just think that that's probably the timetable there. The Nylander one, it feels like that its going to drag into the season for sure, which is interesting.

They know that he gets to day one of camp. if Matthews isn't signed and Nylander isn't signed, it's going to be the talking point. It's going to be what Treliving's asked about. It's going to be what the coaches asked about. It's going to be what the players are going to be asked about. So, you know, and I really believe on the part of the Leafs and the Matthews camp that they're cognizant of that and they'd like to avoid it and they'd like to get something done.

Like, do you just, do you just walk him to the doorstep? And I think I think that would have been more reasonable had they not done that with so many other players, right? And kind of had it accumulate to the point where you start looking at what left and the value that you could have gotten back. And it's just, to me, if he ends up being an own rental, he's walking for nothing.

Like, I don't see a scenario where you're going to enter the trade deadline. And I've tried to kind of kick that around, maybe even with you. Or maybe I was talking about with Versteeg, where you go, maybe the ideal scenario is you go into the season, you see how it plays out. And then you approach the deadline thinking, hey, is he someone you flip somewhere? And I went, how would that ever work? How does a Nylander trade in the middle of the year work? You're moving more.

I just, I can't, if I'm Brad Treliving, I can't have another Johnny Gaudreau situation.

Do you think that that stuff kind of matters more here? Like the optics and the perception of having that done earlier rather than later would have actually served this franchise any tangible benefit and the player.

I think, I think early September is fine. Like I don't think anybody's, this is one of those things that feels like a big deal now and if it's done in three weeks, right? So I think everyone involved knows that it's different here.