It’s a rare Saturday night without Leafs hockey. Plan your lives accordingly. Make a big show of taking your partner out on a Hockey Night in Canada evening and with the reminder that they mean more to you than sports. It’s definitely a favourite card of mine to play in this situation.

It might be a tough one to skip though as there will be keen interest in whether any new information about Maple Leafs deadline targets seep out during the second intermission Headlines segment, but usually a quick scan of social media a couple of minutes after the segment airs gives you the highlights anyway. The week is going to be one filled with Leafs PR notifications and stalking insider accounts, so take what might be the last night you can step away from hockey before the trade deadline but don’t blame me if Brad Treliving chooses tonight as the ideal time to trade for Mikko Rantanen and suck us all back in.

Here are the last pre-deadline Leaflets thoughts:

In a time when all eyes are on the Hurricanes and what they will do with Mikko Rantanen, it seems worth pointing out the lack of stress that is coming out of Toronto in regard to Mitch Marner. It seems that everyone has made their peace with the idea that contract talks won’t happen in season, Mitch isn’t looking to get distracted, and maybe even it’s an acknowledgement that a ton of cap space isn’t a terrible consolation prize for the Leafs if things don’t work out.

Tavares comes with less urgency but after another decent season when people were expecting a step back and every Leafs fan becoming overly familiar with how limited the centre market can be, maybe there is a renewed interest in making Tavares a priority. He does seem interested in getting closure on this and if there is a possibility that results in him being more focused on the ice, maybe a deal is a good thing.

Speculating on the psychological pros and cons of the contract status on a player is a fool’s errand, and while there will be plenty of foolish in this post as always, I won’t guess what their intentions are and whether closure would get more out of them. I’ll just say that I genuinely take both Marner and Tavares at their word that they want to be in Toronto and genuinely believe that Brad Treliving will probably go beyond the lengths I would to re-sign them.

The recent agents poll in The Athletic highlighted that the Leafs are a good organization to be a part of and that likely means it would take a lot for two players with firm roots in the city to consider moving on.

Normally I use Leaflets as a space for just throwing my opinion around and seeing what sticks, but I’ll take a break from that this week and do a quick information dump on the teams that are most capable of helping the Leafs retain salary in a trade next week.

Maybe it’s through directly dealing with these teams or maybe they are a third party, but here are teams that Brandon Pridham will be working closely with:

That’s not to say that playoff bound teams won’t use their retention spaces, it’s just unlikely their priority at the deadline and it is a bit strange to do a favour for a team that you potentially face on your path to the Cup.

The fact that Blackhawks and Sharks have such a limited capacity for retention is a bit of a bummer as they have historically been quite willing to help out. They could potentially be great options for taking salary back but with the Leafs having no shortage of no trade lists to deal with, it’s hard to imagine that lottery bound teams aren’t in those agreements.

Still, there look like plenty of options even before expanding the list to include playoff teams. It will just be interesting to see what the going rate is for retention services.

It seems like it has been a while since there has been any discussion about Jonathan Toews making a comeback this season. Maybe that is no longer in the cards and there is good reason to dismiss it. There’s also plenty of reason to not consider Jonathan Toews the Plan A, B, C, or D for the Leafs third line centre position.

Having established that, I still can’t help but think that Toews could be an interesting option for the Leafs in a reduced role capacity and give him the opportunity to show what he can still do at the NHL level, starting up from a sheltered fourth line capacity.

If things don’t go as planned, no eggs were put in that basket and you just carry on your merry way with Pontus Holmberg or Connor Dewar or one of the other potential fourth line centre options in that role. If there is any gas left in Toews’ tank, the lineup will be beefed up considerably.

There’s probably no shortage of teams that are entertaining this scenario and Toews will likely make his pick from the offers available soon enough. Hopefully the Leafs are still one of the teams actively keeping an eye on this situation, but again, not prioritizing it from a team building perspective.