Toronto Maple Leafs: Luke Glendening Ain’t Coming

The Toronto Maple Leafs will not acquire Luke Glendening from the Detroit Red Wings. Not prior to this year’s trade deadline, not during the following summer, not ever.

This is now the second consecutive season that Luke Glendening‘s name has been linked to the Leafs mere days out from the trade deadline. This is also the second consecutive season that it’s made precisely zero sense, as well.

For someone so well known for playing his cards extremely close to the chest, there’s one thing about himself that Kyle Dubas simply cannot hide; he’s got a type.

You know what I’m talking about. Everyone does. The guy’s a sucker for cheap, skilled, possession-driving gems who can be had for a perceived bargain. When it comes to player acquisition, they’re his bread and butter. And if a formerly cast-aside puck hound with sterling underlying metrics happens to be floating out in the hockey ether somewhere, you better believe Dubas knows everything about him.

This is more or less why the Glendening speculation holds no actual bearing. When put up against all of Dubas’ preferred player attributes, Glendening fits none of them.

Quite literally, he checks none of the GM’s preferred boxes

In regards to cost-efficiency, few would ever categorize Glendening as “undervalued”. His $1.8 million price tag may not seem like a monumental sum when in the context of a constantly rising cap, but it’s still a heck of a lot to shell out for a career fourth-liner whose career high in points is 21 and whose most notable personal accolade came when he finished 40th in Selke voting back in 2016.

To illustrate this, though, let’s take a gander at Connor Brown.

Brown’s $2.1 million cap hit is typically seen as an overpayment by Leaf fans, especially this season. And frankly, given the extent of his current role, those fans would be right.

It’s not that Brown is a bad player. Not in the slightest. But when you’re as tight against the cap as the Leafs are projected to be next season, a $2 million fourth-line winger is simply a luxury you cannot afford.

Even when taking into account the imbalance between Brown’s salary and usage, however, he still has value. In fact, Brown has managed to outscore Glendening this season – and every season prior to this one – despite having played one fewer game and having averaged roughly a full minute less in ice-time.

If Brown is an overpayment, then Glendening certainly is, too. It’s just that the Leafs won’t be forced to surrender any assets if they want to use Brown for their playoff run.

But let’s strip away all the financials for a moment. Let’s pretend that Glendening, hypothetically, makes the league minimum and ticks the “cheap” box on Kyle Dubas’ Ideal Player Model Checklist™.

Would he be a worthwhile add?

The short answer? No.

The long answer? Absolutely friggin’ not.

Remember how much emphasis Dubas puts into analytics? Well, Glendening’s have been downright putrid this season. As in, some of the worst in the league.

Per Natural Stat Trick, the 42.24% CF/60 Glendening has put forth at 5v5 through 55 games thus far lands him 247th out of the 267 NHLers who have logged a TOI minimum of 200 minutes this season. Pair that carnage with an even worse -10.3 5v5 Corsi rel%, and Glendening quickly emerges as the hockey equivalent of a boat anchor – a player who not only struggles to drive play himself but actively withholds those around him from doing so in the process.

The prevailing response by Glendening defenders here could very well be that his analytical struggles are merely the result of him being mired on a bottom-feeding roster. That’s certainly a valid argument. The Red Wings have spent practically this entire season trapped firmly in the NHL’s basement, so it’s not necessarily a stretch to posit that no player looks particularly good given the circumstances.

That’s not the case for Glendening, though. If anything, he’s actually been phenomenally lucky.

Regardless of team quality, Glendening’s 11.5% on-ice shooting percentage, and .933 on-ice save percentage are both uncharacteristically high metrics in their own right and demonstrate that, whenever Glendening hits the ice, Red Wings’ goaltenders begin stopping pucks at a Vezina-calibre level while his teammates score goals at roughly 2% above the league average rate.

Those sparkling ancillary numbers earn Glendening a gaudy 105.7 PDO – good enough to make him the 6th luckiest player in the entire NHL.

And yet, despite all the help he’s gotten from the Hockey Gods above, Glendening’s possession numbers have actually never been lower, toiling among the bottom-20 of all qualified players, and with little offensive success to show for it.

That’s legitimately hard to do.

Not to mention, all of the luck which Glendening has subsequently “benefited” from thus far is, in fact, quantifiably unsustainable. At some point, each of his fourth-line linemates will stop scoring at a first-line rate and Detroit’s goaltending will shed its Vezina-calibre sheen that only seems to arise whenever Glendening is on the ice.

It may not happen today. It may not happen tomorrow. But make no mistake, it will happen. And when it does, the team employing Glendening at that particular time will swiftly enter into a horrifying reality where the NHL’s 247th ranked possession driver somehow gets even worse.

If the rumours from this week are to be believed, that team would be the Leafs.

Not ideal.

So, what does this all mean? Well, it’s more or less a way of arguing that one of the most analytically inclined General Managers in league history, who also happens to treat the concept of asset management as a borderline religion, is unlikely to forfeit said assets in the hopes of acquiring arguably the worst analytical player currently on the trade market.

If the Leafs indeed “kicked the tires” on Glendening, then that’s almost certainly all they did. Either that, or Kyle Dubas abandoned every single player archetype attribute he holds so dear.

You tell me which one is more likely.

Thanks for reading!

All stats courtesy of NaturalStatTrick.com & HockeyReference.com

All salary information courtesy of CapFriendly.com