A trade the Calgary Flames could make by the trade deadline

The lead-up to the National Hockey League’s annual trade deadline is often the wackiest time of the year. Trade rumours fly fast and furious and it’s difficult to wrap one’s head around all the moving parts.

One rumour that seems to persist is regarding the Calgary Flames and their reported interest in right shot forwards, most notably Los Angeles Kings forward Tyler Toffoli. A pending unrestricted free agent, Toffoli has 27 points in 49 games for a rather uneven Kings team.

The fit for the Flames is pretty obvious: Toffoli’s a talented winger who was teammates with Sean Monahan for two seasons with the Ottawa 67’s. There’s a comfort level there and adding Toffoli for a few months could do a lot to push the Flames to the proverbial next level.

How could that trade come to fruition? We tried out a new tool at Puck Pedia: the myPuckPedia GM Mode, to see what a possible Toffoli trade could look like.

Once you head on over to myPuckPedia, sign up and select the team you want to play GM with. (If you want to reset things, hit “Sync” and it’ll return to reality and then you can make different moves.)

The Kings are looking at their future, so my proposal involves dangling Sam Bennett – with a year remaining on his current deal with a $2.55 million cap hit – and a draft pick for Toffoli. For our purposes, it probably would be a conditional pick contingent on either Toffoli re-signing with the Flames or some measure of playoff success – a third round pick that could graduate into a second if conditions are met.

Once you’ve put together the trade, you submit it and it updates your virtual roster and cap structure.

Would this be enough to land Toffoli? Would the Flames need to nudge in another pick or a prospect from within their system? Dive into the myPuckPedia GM Mode yourself and come up with a trade that you think would improve the Flames – especially if it involves them landing a right shooting forward.