MLSE makes Auston Matthews and William Nylander its biggest priority

The Toronto Maple Leafs just turned the offseason temperature up. Auston Matthews and William Nylander are not going anywhere. MLSE made that part clear.

The Athletic dropped the report Friday morning, with Chris Johnston, Pierre LeBrun, James Mirtle and Jonas Siegel all pointing the same direction.

Keeping the captain and the No. 88 winger in Toronto is, per management interviews, the top organizational priority heading into a brutal summer.

Brutal because the Leafs finished 32-36-14 with 78 points. Twenty-eighth overall. A -46 goal differential. The kind of season that usually torches a core, not protects it.

Toronto closed the year on a seven-game losing skid. Final game was a 1-3 loss in Ottawa. They went 2-7-1 in their last ten.

That is the backdrop against which MLSE is publicly drawing a circle around Matthews and Nylander. Read that twice.

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Nylander's case is the easy one. He posted 30 goals and 79 points in 65 games, with 12 points over his last five. He's still the Leafs' most reliable scorer.

Matthews is a different conversation. The captain finished 60 games at 27 goals and 53 points with a -4 rating. That is not the production this market budgets for at $13.25 million.

Over his last ten, the No. 34 sweater added one goal and six points while sitting at minus-eight. The hands are there. The volume is not.

So Toronto is doubling down anyway. With one of the worst goals-against totals in the league at 299, the move signals where the rebuild around them, not of them, is supposed to start.

What does that even look like with this cap structure? Nylander at $11.5 million. Matthews at $13.25 million. John Tavares still on the books. Everything else gets squeezed.

The fans who wanted a teardown after a 28th-place finish just got their answer. The two stars stay. The bottom of the lineup wears the consequences.

Now management has to actually deliver the help.