Pierre LeBrun

you know, sell their side of things to a point where Austin Matthews is on board with the vision of this offseason and where it's headed.

That's a big if, but that's where that side of the process is.

They want to get together at some point in the near future here.

Number two, you know, John Chagas is going to meet with Craig Rubay in the next number of days here, I think by the end of the weekend, again, to see where the coach and the new GM are in terms of whether they're on the same page, whether they share a vision of where things need to go moving forward.

If I had to handicap that part of it, I think that John Chayka will be comfortable with keeping Craig Rubiz as that coach, but that's just a gut feeling on my part.

We'll have to see how that meeting goes between the two sides.

And finally, you know, depending where the Matthews decision goes, I mean, that may influence, you know, what happens at the draft with Toronto having the number one pick and whether or not the timing lines up for them to know what his decision is.

This is where it gets tricky.

I mean, John Chaikin may leave Arizona and not have a firm answer yet from Austin Matthews because it may be that Austin Matthews, as Chris wrote about this week, may need even more time, may need to see more of the revealing of the offseason before knowing whether or not he wants to stay.

And that's the chicken and the egg of this whole thing.

I think the Leafs would like to know where he is before they get going on the offseason, but Austin Matthews wants to see how the offseason plays out before he decides where he goes.

And

And ultimately, that's the most delicate part of it.

But to finally answer your question, if Austin Matthews is available, this isn't a situation where teams are just going to call from left field and say, I want in on this.

They don't have a say.

Austin Matthews and John Moldova have a say.

They have a full no move.

So if they decide they want to move on, if...

It's going to be a list of X teams.

I can't imagine it'll be that long.