The Maple Leafs and Blue Jackets didn’t just make a big trade. They barely beat the clock.
On the eve of the 2026-27 regular season, Toronto landed forward Kirill Marchenko and goaltender Elvis Merzlikins from Columbus, sending Matthew Knies, Steven Lorentz and a 2027 draft pick the other way. For a deal that significant, the timing alone made it stand out.
This wasn’t a summer blockbuster. It came together in the final moments before the season opened.
Blue Jackets general manager Don Waddell later walked through how the whole thing unfolded, and the timeline was as tense as the trade itself. He said the process started a couple of weeks earlier, when John Chayka made clear Toronto had interest in Marchenko. Waddell also made it plain that Columbus wasn’t interested in a teardown.
“You probably go back two, three weeks. John (Chayka) was very upfront that he was interested in the player.
I told him, as I told multiple teams that we’re not going through a rebuild. We don’t want draft picks.
Not that we can’t supplement, but draft picks and prospects - we need to make a trade, a hockey trade.
“We came close the last few years just knocking on the doorstep of making the playoffs. We didn’t want to take a step backwards. So as I talked to teams, there just wasn’t those type of players out there.
“And then John mentioned potentially Knies. And, of course, we did our homework on it. He’s a young player that’s got cost certainty, which is important moving forward.
“And as we continued to talk, I really started to get real serious Sunday. We talked a few times on Sunday and then picked it back up Monday. And to be honest, I went all day Monday, and I thought at 4:30 that the deal wasn’t going to happen because we were still doing some pieces around it.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen the clock. It was 4:59 and 40 seconds that we got the deal done.
Right there. And we had 20 seconds to get our rostered.
So, yeah, it was an interesting day for sure.”
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