Former Canucks GM Brian Burke thinks the Leafs should trade William Nylander

Call it a de facto Around the League column, call it a Canucks blog that’s bored after over a month of seeing their team not play a game — call it whatever you want — folks, we’re talking about the Toronto Maple Leafs today.

As they normally do, the Leafs have dominated headlines over the past little bit, and we’ve somehow managed to not throw together an Around the League column solely about Brad Treliving’s hiring in Toronto and Kyle Dubas’ hiring in Pittsburgh as the Penguins’ new president.

But yes, that’s what’s happened. The Leafs introduced former Calgary Flames GM Brad Treliving as their new GM earlier this week, and he met with the media today. Meanwhile, after being fired two weeks ago by the Leafs, Dubas is now the president in Pittsburgh.

But it’s the Penguins’ most recent president that we’re here to talk about today. Former Penguins president — and of course Vancouver Canucks GM — Brian Burke joined Nick Alberga and Jay Rosehill on Leafs Morning Take today, and as he usually does, he had some strong opinions to give.

When asked about the core four — who for some reason the Leafs seem intent on keeping together — Burke gave perhaps his firmest opinion of all, that the Leafs should trade William Nylander.

“I can address this because I addressed it in real-time. I was working at Sportsnet when it started with Nylander. I said it was too much money, the sequence was wrong, they should have done it in an inverse order of signing. They overpaid Nylander, now they guaranteed Marner would be overpaid, guaranteed Auston Matthews would be overpaid. In my mind, four guys making $40 million isn’t going to work. Even if the cap goes up, it’s not going up by more than a million and a half. It ain’t going to work. So it’s got to change.

“One guy is untradable, the other two guys are too valuable. It’s gotta be Nylander in my mind. And by the way, he’s become valuable to the point where he’s no longer overpaid in my view. I think he was, but his performance the last two years, he’s been a solid playoff performer, solid regular season performer, and it’s time I think to move on and get those assets and get your cap down.”

Burke also talked about his time in Pittsburgh, which came to a somewhat abrupt end after the Penguins missed the playoffs for the first time since 2006.

“Kyle Dubas is a good guy and Pittsburgh is a great city and I really enjoyed working there,” Burke said. “My girlfriend I both said the same thing before I came on here: We loved working there. The only thing we’re unhappy about with Fenway [Penguins ownership] was that we didn’t get to finish the job. We would have loved to stay and see it get done there. But the fact of the matter is it’s a great city, they’ve got some great pieces in place, and they’ve got a great captain. I wish Kyle every success. I hope he has great luck there.”