Rumour: Toronto Maple Leafs Will try and Sign Ben Hutton

The Toronto Maple Leafs are rumored to be interested in signing Ben Hutton.

According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the Toronto Maple Leafs will make an effort to shore up their blue-line by signing defenseman Ben Hutton.

Ben Hutton is 26 years old and has played his entire four year career with the Vancouver Canucks.

Hutton was a fifth round pick back in 2012.

The Toronto Maple Leafs and Ben Hutton

Ben Hutton, according to Friedman, is a player the Leafs attempted to trade for before he was cut loose by the Canucks.

Hutton was not given a qualifying offer last week, and he is now an  unrestricted free-agent.

Hutton had a strong 25 points as a rookie, but has not matched that total since.

It’s hard to  understand why the Toronto Maple Leafs would be interested in this player at all. For his career, Hutton has had negative differentials in shot-attempts, shots, scoring chances and goals. (Naturalstattrick.com)

If you use evolving-hockey.com charts Ben Hutton looks like he hurts his team, not helps it.  It’s easy to to assume that because the Canucks cut him loose, that that automatically makes him a good player (because the Canucks are a poorly run joke of a team that has the league’s worst general manager) but in this case, it appears they were correct.

I suppose that if the Leafs were to get Hutton for a million or less, then he’d be a decent enough depth option.  It really makes no sense for the Leafs to be interested in Hutton, but perhaps they see something in him that I don’t.

If anything, the most interesting thing here is that Hutton is a lefty, as are almost all the players the Leafs have been linked to this summer.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are rumoured to have inquired about trading for Jaccob Slavin and Darnell Nurse – both are left handed.

They are said to prefer to bring back the left handed Jake Gardiner, and we know that in the winter, they traded for Jake Muzzin and not Radko Gudas or Nick Jenson.

It’s interesting that the Leafs seem not to care what hand a defenseman shots with, while the media constantly talks about how they most definitely need to get a right hander.

I find it weird too that no one talked about right-hand defenseman ten years ago – it seems to be a new thing that people just started to care about.  Like most things, the reality is that it doesn’t matter half as much as the hype.

A team that needs a right handed should still choose the best player available regardless of what way he shoots.  The media may not understand this, but it’s nice to know that the Toronto Maple Leafs do.