The loudest Detroit Red Wings trade idea of the week did not come from an insider. It came from a roster simulator, and it does not stop at Simon Edvinsson. The proposal sends Edvinsson and center Marco Kasper to the Toronto Maple Leafs, and it brings 18-year-old rookie Gavin McKenna back to Detroit.
The pitch was built on PuckGM, the roster-building simulator at puckpedia.com, which means it is a fan-built scenario and not a report of anything Detroit and Toronto have discussed. In it, the Red Wings also take back defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Miles Wood and Dakota Joshua, and Toronto signs Edvinsson to a seven-year contract worth $10 million a season.
Edvinsson is an unsigned restricted free agent who has not played a game this season, and the calendar is now the pressure. Under NHL rules, any restricted free agent who does not sign by Dec. 1 cannot play for the remainder of the season. That gives Detroit and its 23-year-old defenseman a hard date rather than an open-ended negotiation.
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Interim general manager Shawn Horcoff has said plainly that he does not want to move him. “I have zero interest in trading Simon Edvinsson,” Horcoff said at his Oct. 14 press conference. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman has since reported that Edvinsson would prefer to be traded, which is not the same thing as a formal trade request but is the clearest sign yet that the two sides are stuck. That is the gap every one of these scenarios lives in: Horcoff’s stated position on one side, his player’s preference on the other, and Dec. 1 closing.
There is a reason other teams keep calling. In his last season with Detroit, Edvinsson played 72 games and put up nine goals and 16 assists with a plus-12 rating, and he is still only 23.
Attaching Kasper to the deal is the detail that makes this one sting more than the usual mock trade. The 22-year-old center has barely been available this season: he played opening night on Oct. 2, missed the next 17 games with an upper-body injury, and Detroit activated him off injured reserve this week. He has two games played, no goals and no assists.
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Selling a young center at the low point of an injury year is how teams end up regretting trades. If Detroit is going to lose Edvinsson, Kasper is not the sweetener it should be adding.
The return is where the scenario comes apart. McKenna was the first overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft and he is 18 years old. He has played 20 games this season, with six goals, seven assists and a minus-11 rating, and the Maple Leafs view him as a franchise piece.
Teams do not hand a first overall pick to a division rival 20 games into his career, and Toronto is not an exception. Edvinsson being traded before Dec. 1 would surprise nobody at this point. The idea that McKenna comes back in the deal is the part that belongs to the simulator.
