Maple Leafs Urged to Pursue Sharks Defenseman After He Hits the Trade Block

It seems that Brad Treliving and the Maple Leafs are trying to change the culture within the team and are certainly getting off on the right foot.

In are new faces like Matias Maccelli, Nicolas Roy, and Michael Pezzetta, meanwhile the team said goodbye to Pontus Holmberg and Mitch Marner; among others.

They still have a lot of work to do, and their main focus is finding a forward to pair with Auston Matthews on the top line, and while they have their options; they are pretty expensive.

But if they were to take a stab at Henry Thrun, who recently was reported to be on the outs in San Jose, they might be able to trade for him to replace Oliver Ekman-Larsson and open up the necessary cap space to bring in that game-changer.

Call me crazy, and you may have the right to, but for as good as Ekman-Larsson is, he is part of what's the problem in Toronto, which is a huge overabundance of aging veterans on long, fairly expensive deals and don't have that upward trajectory of a much younger talent.

Not for nothing, OEL was great in his first season with the Maple Leafs, and coming off a Stanley Cup win with the Florida Panthers meant the Leafs were getting a proven winner with some of the best offensive numbers of this generation.

However, while we saw glimpses of that at times, and Ekman-Larsson certainly played with an edge, he's still a step or two behind at times, and if he gets caught out of position, it's a bad time for the Leafs.

In 77 games with the team in his first season, Ekman-Larsson had 29 points (4G, 25A) while adding 83 blocks, 108 hits, and a plus-14 rating. But he's going to be 34 in a week, and he's making $3.5-million for the next few seasons.

Selling him to a contender who could use a veteran on the back end opens up the chance for Thrun, a fairly talented two-way defender who has been stuck on a middling Sharks team.

Thrun, 24, had 12 points in 60 games with the Sharks, but is slowly evolving into a very decent two-way defender and with him being so young, he has so much time to improve.

Considering Toronto also has some of the best defensive coaches in the league, there's nothing to say that Thrun can't become an even better player (especially in terms of adding physicality).

He's also another huge body at 6'2, 210 pounds and comes at a $1-million price tag; a huge discount on Ekman-Larsson, they can dish him off elsewhere to add some much needed cap space.

Although it's not the splashiest move the Maple Leafs can make, this is a team going through a transition, and adding a young, promising defender to their ranks is a great way to kickstart that period.