Toronto Maple Leafs Bad Trades of the Past Have No Bearing on Today

The Toronto Maple Leafs used to be notorious for trading their picks and prospects, only to fail continually to win anything of substance.

To this day, if you talk about trading a Toronto Maple Leafs prospect, people will say “You can’t do that, it’s what they always did and it never works.”

This line of thinking is understandable, but wrong.

The Toronto Maple Leafs need to trade picks and prospects if they hope to win.

The balance between today and tomorrow is a very difficult one to strike in a salary cap league, but in order to be successful, teams do have to convert their picks and prospects into players that can help them win in the present.  That is just a fact of life in a salary cap league, and the mistakes of the past are totally and completely irrelevant.

The timing is difficult to get right, and it’s always going to be a risky move, but a policy to never trade first round picks or top prospects would be just as bad as trading them indiscriminately every year.

Trading Prospects

Pointing out superstars that could have been members of the Toronto Maple Leafs is a great pasttime that brings us all together – Gretzky, Lindros, Luongo, Niedermeyer, Sakic, Seguin, Hamilton, Rakkel, Gibson, and on and on and on.

But the problem was never that the Leafs traded picks and prospects, the problem was the timing.

The Leafs, for a myriad of reasons (some reasonable, like trading for Owen Nolan, others insane, like trading for Wendel Clark) have a history of doing this.  Some of those reasons were sound at the time, and only retroactively when we know that they didn’t win do they become a bad move.

But you have to take risks. You can’t just refuse to ever trade prospects, the key is timing and making smart moves.

I think we can all agree that low risk depth moves are clearly a very smart trade deadline tactic. What we are really talking about here is the big move, and whether or not the Leafs should make it.  If they do, I think we should also agree that there is probably not a lot of value in a rental move.  Not for top prospects.  In order to make a move worth making, you must get more than one playoff shot with your upgrade. (Although I am sure there are exceptions).

The value in trading for a player with term cannot be estimated. I don’t think the Leafs should sacrifice Liljegren and a first rounder or two in order to make one low-percentage play.

If there is no value, they shouldn’t make a trade. However, being against any and all trades of picks and prospects based on the past moves of Leafs GMs is not rationale.

Other than the city and the logo, the current Leafs regime has nothing to do with past ones.  The past history of the trades made by former Leafs GMs has no more relevance to the current GM than does the history of Detroit, Chicago or LA.

Just because past teams made bad decisions doesn’t mean Kyle Dubas e\and company should refuse to ever deal the team’s prospects.  Keep in mind that in decision making, being too cautious is often just as disastrous as being too risky.  Like anything, there’s a balance.

I don’t think the Leafs should strip mine their entire future for one chance at a cup.  But, at the same time, they should keep in mind the rarity of the situation which is, as follows:

They have two of the best players in the NHL on entry-level deals, which gives them a massive advantage over the rest of the league in terms of the salary cap.  Furthermore, they have cap space, and they have the prospect capital to improve.

So should they?

Do or Don’t

Given the rarity of their cap situation, and the fact that they’ve been one of the better teams in hockey despite dressing their optimal lineup only once or twice, and despite playing one of the worst players in the NHL on their top pairing, I think it’s a no-brainer.

To wit:  they have a built-in advantage, their team is better than the standings indicate and they have the means and opportunity to improve.

I honestly can’t imagine a scenario where a team would be better equipped to take the risk of selling some of the future for the present.

Some people might say ‘hey, this is just the beginning of their competitive window.”  But they’d be wrong. In a salary cap league, your window is not determined by age or experience of your players. It’s determined by how many good players you can fit into a given limit.

It’s really a question of probability.  Ask yourself the following question and your answer will determine if you think the Leafs should go for it now:

How likely is it that the Leafs will, over the next eight years, have better value on any contract than Auston Matthews or Mitch Marner is currently providing.

If it’s not likely, then clearly this year is their year.

Like I said, it’s a no-brainer.