Bruins reporter suggests outrageous trade involving John Tavares.

The Toronto Maple Leafs suffered a very disappointing exit in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs and the fact that it came at the hands of a Montreal Canadiens squad that most pundits considered a much lesser team makes it that much more difficult of a pill to swallow. 

As you would expect in such a scenario fans have been calling for every move imaginable including trading players like star forward Mitch Marner, who admittedly has vastly underperformed in the playoffs, but it is one thing for fans to mention such panic moves and another thing entirely when a journalist at a major publication makes a similar suggestion.

On Monday Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe made what I consider to be an outrageous trade proposal when he argued that the Maple Leafs should trade their captain, star forward John Tavares, and do so while retaining an outrageous $5.5 million of his salary. That would amount to a 50% salary retention on Tavares, the maximum allowed under the collective bargaining agreement, and it would leave the Leafs with that much dead cap space over the next 4 years.

Even crazier, Dupont went on to suggest that the Leafs should use the cap space they save by moving their star captain, a player that wasn't even a factor in their first round collapse due to a serious injury suffered in Game 1 of that series against Montreal, to acquire one of the worst contracts in the National Hockey League. Dupont suggested that the Leafs could look to acquire Florida Panthers netminder Sergei Bobrovsky, a goaltender that has massively underperformed since signing his deal with the Panthers, presumably to fill the role of number one goaltender for the foreseeable future in Toronto. 

The same Sergei Bobrovsky who recorded a .906 save percentage and 2.91 goals against average this season while counting for a staggering $10 million against the cap. The same Bobrovsky, currently 32 years old by the way, who recorded an even worse 3.23 goals against average and .900 save percentage the season prior. The same Bobrovsky that was so bad the Panthers only called on him 3 times during their own playoff run, with Bobrovsky rewarding them with a 5.33 goals against average and .841 save percentage for doing so.

I know Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas has been the target of much criticism as of late, but perhaps fans in Toronto should simply be grateful that he, and not Dupont, is the current GM of their team.