When the Toronto Maple Leafs moved Matthew Knies to Columbus on the eve of the season, some supporters went looking for a reason beyond hockey. Elliotte Friedman doesn’t think there is one.
Speaking on Sportsnet’s Real Kyper & Bourne, Friedman addressed the theories directly.
“Nobody ever said this is a bad guy or this is a terrible person or we don’t like him,” Friedman said. “The only concerns I ever heard about him were that he gets hurt, so maybe that was an issue to them.”
Was there a problem with Matthew Knies in Toronto?
Friedman’s explanation comes down to what Toronto believed it could get in exchange.
“I just think Knies got traded because they look at what they could get for him and they said we think that ceiling is higher,” he said.
The player in question is Kirill Marchenko, who arrived alongside goaltender Elvis Merzlikins and forward Miles Wood in a six-player deal. Columbus received Knies, Steven Lorentz, Emil Andrae and a conditional 2027 second-round pick, with the Blue Jackets retaining 18 percent of Merzlikins’ salary.
The numbers explain the bet. Marchenko led Columbus with 27 goals and finished second on the team with 67 points last season, and has produced 58 goals and 141 points in 155 games since the start of 2024-25. He also signed a six-year, $75 million extension worth $12.5 million a season as part of the trade, which will make him Toronto’s third-highest-paid forward from 2027-28 behind Auston Matthews and William Nylander.
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Knies, still only 23, leaves with 58 and 66-point seasons behind him and four years remaining on a deal carrying a $7.75 million cap hit. The argument against Toronto’s side of it is straightforward enough: they’ve committed nearly $5 million more per year to a player they believe projects higher, rather than keeping the cheaper option already on the roster.
Whether that gamble pays off will take a while to judge. What Friedman made clear is that the reasoning was about projection rather than anything happening behind closed doors.
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