Leafs officially linked to not one but TWO Blues forwards

Dave Pagnotta of The Fourth Period reported today that the top two players on the Leafs' "wish list" are a pair of St. Louis Blues in Ryan O'Reilly and Ivan Barbashev. Pagnotta reported that due to how well the Leafs blueline has performed through a slew of injuries, their focus has shifted towards the forward market. As always though, the Leafs are tight against the cap, only have approximately $1.2M in cap space so if they were going to acquire one or both, roster players would have to be moved.

Both O'Reilly and Barbashev are UFAs at the end of the season and O'Reilly has publicly stated that he does not want to be moved. However, neither have no-trade clauses so they don't have much of a say as to whether they will stay or go. O'Reilly has a cap hit of $7.5M and is currently on injured reserve with an ankle injury while Barbashev has a cap hit of $2.25M. Barbashev would solidify the Leafs' third line and possibly slide into the second line left wing position. He put up a career high 26 goals and 60 points last season, but like many Blues, O'Reilly included, has struggled this year with only 9 goals and 24 points through 50 games. O'Reilly, the 2019 Conn Smythe winner would give the Leafs a veteran, third line center that could be deployed in a shut down and penalty killing role to take some of the pressure off of David Kampf. O'Reilly is a surprising playoff performer having registered 56 points in 64 playoff games.

Should Dubas acquire one or both, it would likely mean the end of Alexander Kerfoot and/or Pierre Engvall in Toronto, which would make a few Leaf fans happy. One way around it though, would be to shut down Auston Matthews for the season and use his cap space to go "all in" and have him return for game 1 - similar to the way the Lightning did it with Nikita Kucherov's hip injury and the Hawks with Patrick Kane.