Will the Toronto Maple Leafs Provide a Christmas Blockbuster Trade?
By James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs are looking to upgrade their blue-line.
As is apparent with every game, Ron Hainsey is not a top pairing defenseman anymore. The Toronto Maple Leafs are – or at least show be – desperate to upgrade on this position. It’s not just that Hainsey is too slow and bad at passing to be effective in a top pairing role, it’s that Morgan Rielly, the Leafs best defenseman, would also improve with a better partner.
As you may or may not know, the Christmas Trade Freeze begins tonight.
So the question is: Are the Leafs going to make a move before the deadline?
Blue Line Rumours
NHL Rumours are a hard thing to pin down. The mainstream networks have their insiders, but in order to keep the cache on the “insider” tag, they tend to (it seems to me) only report on rumours that have a strong possibility of happening.
Given that I haven’t heard those guys discuss any Leafs trades they think are immanent, we can’t feel that confident that the Toronto Maple Leafs will make a move today.
However, we do know three things:
1) The rest of the internet is alive with Leafs rumours.
2) Trade deadlines encourage action.
3) The Leafs need to make a trade
Given that, I think there is at least a reasonable chance the Leafs make a move today. But who would it be for?
Colton Parayko
Parayko to the Leafs has and continues to be the hottest rumour in the NHL. It was briefly Parayko’s teammate, Alex Pietrangelo, but he is out indefinitely with an injury.
If we don’t factor in the cost to acquire, I think Parayko is the obvious choice between the two. In fact, it’s hard to believe that he’d be available, but if he is, it’s a guarantee that the Leafs are interested.
I mean, who wouldn’t be?
Parayko is huge, right handed and awesome. He’s only 24, has three straight 32+ point seasons and seems well on his way to setting a new career high in goals this year.
He is signed for three more years after this one at the preposterously low cap-hit of $5.5 million.
Now why would the Blues move him? Who knows? This is a team, remember, that traded Paul Stastny at last year’s trade deadline only to miss the Playoffs by one point. Based on that, of course they’d trade Parayko.
Should the Leafs acquire him, the cost will be astronomical, but probably worth it. Parayko would instantly become the Toronto Maple Leafs second best defenseman, and give them one of the best blue lines in the NHL (Rielly, Parayko, Gardiner, Dermott would be amazing).
Will the rumours come true?
I doubt it, but it’s fun to imagine the Leafs giving us a Christmas Blockbuster.