Toronto Maple Leafs: Bystanders to a Disaster
The Toronto Maple Leafs opened training camp today.
While us Toronto Maple Leafs fans were sitting around waiting for news on William Nylander, the Ottawa Senators stole the limelight.
They traded Erik Karlsson – arguably among the best defenseman of all-time – to the San Jose Sharks for Dylan Demelo, Chris Tierny, Rudolf Balcers, Josh Norris, a 2020 1st, and a 2019 2nd. There are also conditional picks.
This trade is an absolute disaster.
What Are they Thinking?
The Ottawa Senators have made a terrible trade here. It is about quantity, not quality. It is hard to believe that they are trading Erik Karlsson away without receiving at least one blue-chip player.
Josh Norris is a nice prospect (19th overall 2017) but if the Sharks were not willing to at least include their best prospect (Ryan Merkley), why rush the trade?
I get that Karlsson is a pending UFA and that keeping him through the season would constitute a big distraction, and that there is risk in not getting anything for him if he gets injured, but I can’t believe there isn’t one NHL team that would have given a top prospect.
If this is all you can get, why not hold out for more?
At least you can sell a top prospect to your fans. You can’t really pump your fanbase up about Josh Norris, some guys you’re going to eventually flip, a guy drafted in the 5th round four years ago, and a couple of draft picks.
To make matters worse, the Senators (who were way out of the playoffs) could have traded Karlsson at last year’s deadline and got paid for two playoff seasons worth of the player they were selling.
This was botched in every way possible.
B-R-U-T-A-L
This is a terrible return for one of the best players in the NHL. Senators GM Pierre Dorian should not even have been allowed to make this trade. It was clear when he traded for Matt Duchene last year that he was not a good GM.
Then it became irrefutable when San Jose made a profit from flipping Mike Hoffman earlier in the summer that Dorien was bad at his job. So why allow someone who is clearly not the man for the job to make the single most important trades in franchise history?
It is hard to fathom.
As someone who has watched the Toronto Maple Leafs employ a series of the most terrible general managers imaginable, I know the signs of incompetence when I see them. I see them in Ottawa right now.
The Senators now need to extract maximum value for Matt Duchene, Mark Stone and anything else left on the bones of this rotting carcass of a franchise. Pierre Dorion should not be left in charge to make those deals.
I feel terrible for Senators fans today. Not only has a massively incompetent management group cost them the services of the best player who likely will ever wear the Senators uniform, but they are in serious danger of allowing the Avalanche to have the #1 overall pick in next year’s draft. (At least they do seem to understand that they’ve traded the pick and where Colorado drafts is irrelevant to them at this point. It would have been worse to watch them try to get better in the short term just to avoid the optics.)
For fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs, we know how this feels every time we see Tyler Seguin or Dougie Hamilton being two of the best players in the NHL.
Today’s trade was terrible. It will go down as one of the worst trades in NHL history. The Senators had to at least get one blue-chip player, but instead all they got was an OK prospect, a first and a second rounder + a bunch guys they’ll flip for lower draft picks later.
Terrible.