Grading the Knies-Marchenko trade: Who won high-profile swap between Maple Leafs, Blue Jackets?

Sep 28, 2026, 21:49 EDT

Credit: IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Though the offseason is reaching its end, the fallout from the 2025-26 season will continue to play out in the coming days and weeks. Connor Hellebuyck is still trying to force his way out of Winnipeg and remains suspended. The increasingly hopeless Detroit Red Wings have neither washed their hands of deposed captain Dylan Larkin nor signed their top left-shot defenseman, RFA Simon Edvinsson. One more domino did fall on Monday evening, though, when the Columbus Blue Jackets sent discontent sniper Kirill Marchenko to the Toronto Maple Leafs for burgeoning power forward Matthew Knies.

Both players have long been at the center of trade rumors, and both will step into a new opportunity with their respective new employers. For Marchenko, that means moving to a high-profile market from famously low-key Columbus and playing next to a superstar center in Leafs captain Auston Matthews. For Knies, the trade represents a chance to be regarded as a foundational player for his team. That valuation strangely eluded him in Toronto despite his youth, production, and affordability.

The trade is not one-for-one, and the moving parts and salary machinations that were included to get the deal over the line will factor into the final Daily Faceoff Trade Grades of the 2026 offseason.

Columbus Blue Jackets

Receive:
LW Matthew Knies, 23 – $7.75-million cap hit through 2031
C Steven Lorentz – $1.35-million cap hit through 2028
D Emil Andrae, 24 – $1.55-million cap hit through 2028
2027 2nd-round pick

The offseason plan for the CBJ was straightforward enough. Veteran executive Don Waddell wanted to secure players with term and cost certainty to avoid further upheaval stemming from uncertainty around franchise player Zach Werenski’s future (news broke that Marchenko would not resign shortly after Werenski’s trade request fakeout). He also wanted to add size and snarl to his roster in response to coach Rick Bowness’s legendary scolding of the Jackets’ defeatist.

Some of Waddell’s other offseason moves, like a trade for veteran two-way ace Valeri Nichushkin and extension of high-motor winger Cole Sillinger, checked both those boxes, but none so comprehensively as his trade for Knies. The former Golden Gopher has everything Waddell and Bowness need, or at least think they need, to fix their famously dreary franchise.

Knies, 23, is young enough to fit the timeline of a young nucleus of potential future stars including top center Adam Fantilli, 21, excellent goaltender Jet Greaves, 25, and versatile defenseman Denton Mateychuk, 22. Knies is a big, strong nailgun (173 hits) who will contribute to the culture of grit Bowness is trying to build around the wonderful checking line of Sillinger, Mathieu Olivier, and Charlie Coyle. Crucially, Knies’s soft hands (23 G/82 GP, career 16.3 career S%) will replace some of the production the Jackets will lose with Marchenko, their top goal scorer in each of the past three seasons, even if Knies needs to add some assertiveness to his offensive game (140 SOG/82 GP compared to 210 by Marchenko) to become a true first-line scorer.

St Louis BluesTeam Cap Summary

Cap Summary

2026-27

2027-28

Projected Cap Hit

$102,109,999

$66,849,998

Projected Cap Space

$1,890,001

$46,650,001

Current Cap Space

$1,890,001

$46,650,001

Active Players

23/23

13/23

Draft Picks

Round

'27

'28

Then there’s Knies’s contract, signed before the post-Leo Carlsson bonanza that inflated Fantilli’s value, which will keep him in Columbus through 2031 at a bargain $7.75-million AAV. Waddell’s willingness to take on contract term in trades for Nichushkin and Connor Garland to avoid going back to the negotiation table, where Columbus has had to pay too steeply to keep Coyle and Ivan Provorov on its embattled team, all but destroyed any chance of keeping Marchenko at the sort of price Toronto was willing to offer. In an exploding market, securing a viable, reasonably-priced replacement for the Russian on Fantilli’s wing makes those earlier moves much more palatable.

The extras are worth noting, too. The Blue Jackets cleaned up their books by shedding most of problem goalie Elvis Merzlikins’s contract and getting out from under a bad deal for bottom-six speedster Miles Wood that has now been traded twice. Beyond the cap balancing act, they also added a second-round pick to their draft coffers and picked up a decent young bottom-pair puckmover in Emil Andrae, who will help cover for injury absences on the blue line in the early months of the season.

The Maple Leafs treated Marchenko as the A-side of this swap, and though he is the best player involved, Waddell will be pleased to have escaped a potentially painful divorce with the forward smelling like roses.

Grade: A

Toronto Maple Leafs

Receive:
RW Kirill Marchenko, 23 – $3.85-million cap hit through 2027, $12.5-million cap hit through 2031
G Elvis Merzlikins, 32 – $4.43-million cap hit through 2027
LW Miles Wood, 31 – $2.50-million cap hit through 2029

Toronto GM John Chayka’s willingness to jump through hoops while losing a good young player in the final trade of his frenetic offseason means Marchenko must be significantly better than Knies for Chayka to be vindicated. That’s not an obvious call to the casual fan, but the Leafs emerged from this deal with the most effective player to change hands, and by a surprisingly comfortable margin.

Knies remains a rising top-six forward, but the gulf between him and Marchenko as offensive drivers is far greater than the one-point discrepancy in their point totals (Knies 66-67 Marchenko) would imply. Where Knies’s impressive 33 helpers at even strength and proficiency at the net front kept him in the score sheet despite the Maple Leafs’ inability to consistently generate dangerous looks during his minutes (2.33 xGF/60), Marchenko’s evolution from one-dimensional sniper to all-around chance-creation dynamo has shown up big time in his metrics since 2024; Columbus averaged over 3 xGF/60 during his five-on-five minutes in each of the past two seasons.

Knies was also hampered by a clunky fit with Matthews, whose historic goal-scoring pace has slowed to merely very good since 2024. Knies scored all but one of his goals in tight last season, an impressive feat of finishing that nonetheless crowded the crease with defenders, not ideal on a line with one of the best low-slot scorers of all time. Marchenko, meanwhile, fired off his heavy wrister from mid-range areas 102 times, the joint-10th highest total in the league, per NHL EDGE. His shooting threat from outside will draw significant attention and create more opportunities to find Matthews between the dots than Knies’s crash-bang game.

That potential chemistry with Matthews could allow Marchenko’s elite tools (his skating speed, as recorded by NHL EDGE, is in an elite bracket) to translate into elite, not good, scoring returns the same way that Martin Necas’s did when he began flanking Nathan MacKinnon for the Colorado Avalanche. Though Knies is younger than Marchenko by three years, his directness and lack of perimeter scoring means he could be closer to his ceiling, too.

Marchenko, and a contract at the going rate for a player of his ilk, is a worthy gamble by Chayka, then. It’s a gamble nonetheless; Knies’s contract is tough to walk away from when the Drake Bathersons of the world are pulling in over $10 million a year. The extra assets Chayka threw in, along with the headaches of stashing Merzlikins on the LTIR and Wood in the AHL, make the Blue Jackets the winners in a win-win.

Grade: B+

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