With the Kings struggling last season, winger Tyler Toffoli’s name started to come up in trade speculation as the trade deadline approached. As he was struggling offensively and had another year left on his contract, GM Rob Blake ultimately decided against selling low and brought him back for the final season of his deal.
Things haven’t gone much better in 2019-20. While his offensive numbers are a bit better compared to last year’s pace, Toffoli was recently made a healthy scratch as new head coach Todd McLellan looks to light a fire under a team that has just five wins in 14 games to start the season and has them battling to stay out of the Western Conference basement as a result.
Not surprisingly, Toffoli’s name has once again resurfaced in trade speculation. Speaking with Sportsnet’s Luke Fox, the 27-year-old seems relatively unfazed about potentially being on the move in the coming months:
I mean, it’s just the way it is. It comes with not playing well and not winning games, so whatever happens, happens.
With Los Angeles clearly heading towards a rebuilding phase, they’re going to want to be clearing out some veterans and stockpiling picks and young players. However, the majority of their veterans are on long-term deals which are difficult to move in general but even trickier to do so in-season. That makes Toffoli’s expiring deal, one that carries a $4.6MM cap hit, a much more palatable target.
With three seasons of 20-plus goals under his belt over the past five years, there should be a fair bit of interest in Toffoli. While his recent dip in production will certainly affect his trade value, it still seems more likely than not that it will be a matter of when, not if, Toffoli is dealt between now and the February 24th trade deadline.
Curious what the asking price on Toffoli would be. Habs don’t necessarily need another winger but adding someone with strong possession numbers and 20 goal ability to the middle 6 couldn’t hurt.
I like how these Kings articles keep saying they are heading for a rebuild….. the rebuild has been underway now since last offseason, to anyone who knows the team/game. Looking at another 3 years minimum before this team is competitive again. Vilardi being essentially a lost prospect, doesn’t help that timeline much either
I don’t know if it can really be considered a rebuild though when they still have Brown, Quick, Kopitar, Kovalchuk, Martinez, Carter, Doughty, and even veterans like Clifford, Lewis, and Toffoli. I think their just simply bad and haven’t really committed to rebuilding.
Oh it’s a rebuild… but as the article pointed out, they have aging players on long term contracts (like the ones you mentioned). So this rebuild is particularly difficult because they can’t just unload those players because, for the most part, none of them are performing and teams aren’t really interested.
That makes it a little tricky. They are essentially stuck on a holding pattern with slow, aging, and lacking skill players…. until those contracts run out. Tough to trade players who aren’t performing
Well put, @Kwflanne. Keep this last post and re-post it for every other team’s rebuild/retool situation. It applies to everybody. You can’t just “trade this guy, trade that guy!”, since that doesn’t work in the cap era. If you’re stuck with bad contracts, you’re probably going to be stuck with them until they run out. Very few exceptions to that. I keep trying to get through to guys who are having a hard time understanding the implications of the cap system. You just can’t trade a guy if there’s no willing trade partner.
It’s just going to be a tough rebuild because of how bad their situation is. They have too many players on long term deals that other teams just simply don’t want to trade for. There’s not a whole lot of valuable assets to be had considering their contracts. Hard to have a fire sale when everything you’re selling is burnt. I’d call it a rebuild it’s just going to be a long one
They’re bad but a rebuild is a ‘tear it down, build it up’ situation. I don’t think the Kings have done enough tearing down to consider this a rebuild yet.
So, guys, do you think the Kings are going to create a new, old saying: “Out of the ashes, rises…more ashes…” ?