Why the Toronto Maple Leafs Can’t Wait to Trade
By James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs have a pretty nice team.
By adding John Tavares to a core already featuring Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Mitch Marner was a coup, and the Toronto Maple Leafs look set to be the NHL’s premier offensive team.
But they have a glaring weakness: Defense.
Not just their blueline, but their entire team. The Leafs allowed the 9th most 5v5 scoring chances against last season and the fourth most shots against per 60 minutes. They were under 50% CF as a team and only finished as high as they did because Frederick Andersen was outstanding for most of the season.
Outlook
The Leafs current roster features zero NHL forwards who could be called ‘elite’ defensive players. Hyman, Kadri and Brown are decent, but no one is confusing them with Joel Ward, Sean Couturier or Jordan Staal.
(I’ll just through this out there again: eight of the last ten Stanley Cup Finals featured either Patrice Bergeron, Anze Kopitar or Marian Hossa. All premier defensive players).
On the blueline, Gardiner is better than given credit for, and Carrick is a solid defense-only player. But other than that no one- Hainsey, Rielly, Dermott or anyone else on the roster – really inspires confidence from a defensive standpoint.
Even if Andersen is one of the best goalies in the NHL it’s a lot to ask him to repeat last season’s performance. Goalies – good goalies – do not typically do well in front of bad defensive teams.
There is no doubt the Leafs will win a lot of games, but it seems right now that a lot of those might be 6-5 games.
What to Do?
The Leafs – if they defer their bonus payments until next year and put Horton on the LTIR – would have roughly $18 million minus whatever Nylander ends up costing. That is a minimum of $10-12 million to spend. Even if they only have $8 that’s enough to get another star player.
But UFAs who are good are gone, so if they’re going to load up, it’s through trades.
Most analysis I see says ‘wait and see’ before saying not to trade any of their favorite players because……they really like those players. I get it. No one wants to trade one of their favorite players.
And there are solid reasons to wait to make a trade: see how the roster does and who becomes available once teams fall out of the race. Not a terrible idea.
But not a good one, either.
But when you know a weakness, it doesn’t make sense to wait to address it. The Leafs are all-in for this year (last year Matthews and Marner are cheap, so they can never fit so many players in under the cap as they can now) and so there is actually a huge reason why the Toronto Maple Leafs shouldn’t wait to fix their team:
The Atlantic Division is a joke. Detroit is the worst team in the NHL, Buffalo is bad, Montreal is likely bad and Florida is one of the worst managed teams in pro sports. Barring disaster, the top three teams are going to be Boston, Toronto and Tampa in some order.
Since we pretty much know that, it’s extremely important to win the division. If you win the division, you have to play an incredibly stupid first round matchup against one of the top teams in the NHL. (It’s not even that far fetched if you said Toronto, Boston and Tampa were the three best teams in the NHL).
So waiting to improve the team until the trade deadline is actually a pretty bad move. Points count the same in October as they do in March, so it’s imperative to get off to a great start so that you don’t have to waste your best chance to win by getting a first round matchup against one of the other best teams in hockey.
The Leafs can’t just meander along with Ron Hainsey on the top pairing until March.
Obviously no one wants to trade Nazem Kadri, Timothy Liljegren or the team’s future first round picks. But they might have to. I don’t really see another option for getting better immediately. I hope I’m wrong.
Brown, Neilson and a 2nd is a funny meme for a reason. You don’t get to improve your team by trading away multiple lesser assets.
Next. We Bust Your Favorite Narrative. dark
The Toronto Maple Leafs need one or two better defensive forwards and they need one or two better defenseman. They need better team defense.
You can’t wait until March to address it, or you can have fun playing Tampa Bay in the first round.