Dubas explains how the trade with Avalanche happened and why it included Nazem Kadri

A lot of players were on the move in the NHL on Monday as the free agent market officially opened for business, but the biggest shock came later in the day when the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Colorado Avalanche pulled off a blockbuster deal that sent Nazem Kadri to the Avs and Tyson Barrie to the Leafs.
 

On Tuesday, Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas was a guest on OverDrive where he discussed the recent blockbuster trade, Mitch Marner’s current contract negotiations, and the moves he’s made so far this offseason. While discussing the deal, Dubas was asked how he made the trade work and how he decided on Nazem Kadri of all players.
 

“As we started to have different discussions with different teams it was pretty clear that if they’re going to return a high level defenceman back it would either have to be one of our younger core players that we feel still have lots of room to grow or in terms of an established guy who is in the midst of his prime it was going to have to be Naz,” said Dubas.
 

“We didn’t have another defenceman we could move and we weren’t going to move certainly none of John [Tavares], Auston [Matthews], or Mitch [Marner], so we kind of got into that range where it was going to have to be Naz, that was kind of what the other teams said back to us.
 

“Then it was all about working out the scenarios and getting ourselves comfortable for moving on without him and our keys that we saw to reach for in the deal was we had in return a defenceman who was going to help our team, and we were also hopeful that because Naz was signed for an extended period we were also hopeful we could find a centreman who could come in, or someone who could play centre, to fill in his minutes on the third line.
 

“We paired that and narrowed down the teams that way and paired it with the fact we were able to bring [Jason] Spezza in and [William] Nylander can play centre. We’ve got Spezza who has certainly played centre, I know he’s played wing in recent years, but the Colorado deal in the end was the one we felt was best for us.”

It’s always tough to trade someone, especially when they’re the longest serving member of the team at the time and spent their entire 10-year NHL career with the club. However, sometimes you need to make big moves like this in order to take the next step, as we learned from Masai Ujiri last summer when he traded DeMar DeRozan for Kawhi Leonard.
 

The Maple Leafs and the Avalanche will play in Colorado on November 23, and will play in Toronto nearly two weeks later on December 4.