Scoring 100 goals with the same NHL team merely suggests you have been playing for a while, Maple Leafs forward James van Riemsdyk said with a wry grin. Encircled by reporters near his dressing room stall, he then made a concession: “It’s a cool milestone and, hopefully, I’ve got many more to come in a Leafs jersey.”

He became the 55th player in franchise history to reach the century mark on Saturday, during a shootout loss in Vancouver, and he reached it with impressive speed. How much longer he remains in that jersey, though, is emerging into a key subplot of the season.

Toronto is a team suddenly wealthy in young forwards, but in need of help on the blue line. As a 27-year-old with a proven track record and another year remaining on his contract, van Riemsdyk has become a potential trade target. Bob McKenzie, the lead NHL analyst at TSN, and Pierre LeBrun, at ESPN, have both mused aloud about the possibility over the last week.

“You don’t really worry about it, too much,” van Riemsdyk said after the team’s practice on Monday. “And I think that kind of stuff comes from experience.”

He has been traded before, and by a team based much closer to his childhood home. The Philadelphia Flyers selected van Riemsdyk with the second pick of the 2007 NHL Entry Draft, and five years later, they shipped him to Toronto for defenceman Luke Schenn.

The rumours bothered van Riemsdyk then. He grew up in Middletown, N.J., which is only a 90-minute drive from Philadelphia. And because he was younger, hearing his name started to eat at him.

“You take it a little more personally, at that point,” he said on Monday. “You’re a little naïve to the fact that those sorts of things can happen, although you never think it can happen to you.”

He scored two goals in the third game he ever played with the Leafs, and even in one of the darkest on-ice periods in franchise history, he remained productive. Former Leafs coach Randy Carlyle seemed to make it a personal mission to change the way van Riemsdyk played in the offensive zone, tying him to the front of the opposing net to maximize his size and quick hands.

“It was my big opportunity to kind of show what I could do,” the forward said. “Randy gave me a chance to kind of play some more minutes, play a more meaningful role and try to take that and run with it.”

Among players with 100 or more goals in a Toronto uniform, van Riemsdyk has been scoring at almost a top-20 pace. For Leafs teams that have only made the playoffs once in his four full seasons, he has averaged 0.36 goals a game. (Babe Dye, a star of the team’s founding era, averaged 0.98 goals a game from 1919 to 1931, finishing with 173 goals in 177 games.)

On Monday, van Riemsdyk was asked if he understood that made him a valuable trading chip.

“I’d like to think I’m a productive player,” he said. “So hopefully, teams always want those.”

Leafs coach Mike Babcock acknowledged the speculation, but suggested the team was not looking to make a move. The NHL trade deadline will toll on March 1, meaning van Riemsdyk might have to hear the speculation echo around the league for many more weeks to come.

“I think it’s way different for a kid who’s 19 or 20, or just arriving, and you start making noise,” Babcock told the crowd of reporters. “And as you know, you guys can make lots of noise.”