Maple Leafs May Have a Bitter Pill to Swallow Following Latest Trade Report

Maple Leafs GM Brad Treliving has been revamping the Leafs' forward group significantly this off-season, beginning with the acquisition of 24-year-old Matias Maccelli from the Utah Mammoth and Nicolas Roy from the Vegas Golden Knights in return for Mitch Marner.

Always looking to add, the Leafs are still in need of a top-six forward to at least partially replace the 102 points that Marner put up last season. In doing so, he has also been trying to move out a pair of veteran forwards in David Kampf and Calle Jarnkrok.

Unfortunately for Treliving, he has yet to find a taker for either and being unable to move them has seemingly stalled and more additions to the forward group.

According to Anthony Di Marco from Daily Faceoff, Treliving's lack of success thus far may require him to attach an asset to one or both players in order to move them out.

Not only would adding one of the limited assets Treliving and the Leafs have left be a tough pill to swallow for the Leafs, but also for Leafs Nation. Treliving received massive praise from fans of the Leafs for getting an asset in return for dumping Ryan Reaves' contract, but would likely be under fire if he resorted to the tactic used by former Leafs GM Kyle Dubas to correct his mistakes like adding a first-round pick in a deal to get rid of Patrick Marleau.

There is still plenty of off-season remaining, and the Leafs do have slightly more than $5M in cap space, so the reshuffling of the forward group isn't entirely stalled, but creating the cap space and opening roster spots would give Treliving a much clearer picture of what he can and can't do as training camp approaches.