Toronto Maple Leafs Can Still Sign Jake Gardiner, and They Should

The Toronto Maple Leafs made two huge trades yesterday.

The first, saw the Toronto Maple Leafs send Nikita Zaitsev and Connor Brown to the Ottawa Senators for cap relief, a draft pick and several players, including Cody Ceci, who may or may not ever play for the Leafs.

The second trade was more of a “hockey trade” which saw two teams trade with each other from positions of strength.

Subsequently the Leafs will have a better defensive forward on their roster then they’ve had since Leo Komarov’s prime.  They will also have a 59 point right side defenseman to play on one of the top two pairings.

But are they any better then they were?

Toronto Maple Leafs at Present

The Leafs are not any better then they were yesterday.

In fact, they are much worse.

Kadri for Kerfoot isn’t much of a downgrade – Kadri wasn’t going to get enough minutes on the third line to fully take advantage of his powers and talents, and Kerfoot is one of those offensively gifted defensively oriented forwards (like Marian Hossa and Nino Niederreiter, though probably not as good as the former) who are extremely valuable.

Tyson Barrie is a great addition, but at best he’s just a right handed version of Jake Gardiner, and given that the Leafs won’t likely be using him as their top power-play option, this is probably a downgrade overall.

I don’t care about Hainsey, Zaitsev or Brown, because whatever they brought to the table was overshadowed by the opportunity cost of overpaying the bottom of your roster.  The money will be re-allocated, better spent and the Leafs will be better off without the overpaid trio.

But overall, with Kadri and Gardiner out, and Kerfoot and Barrie in, it’s a slight downgrade to the overall roster, as much as people who (ridiculously) don’t like Gardiner will want to think otherwise.

The solution?

Sign Jake Gardiner.

If they do, their roster is massively upgraded. If they don’t, it’s a wash. At best.

As of press time, he’s still out there.  The Toronto Maple Leafs can’t currently afford him, but the rumour is that they gave the maximum allowable signing bonus to Cody Ceci, meaning that while he’ll have a $4 million or so cap-hit, the Leafs will already have paid most of his actual salary.

Why bother to structure the contract in such a way if you weren’t intent on flipping him?   If the Leafs could ship out Ceci, they would have the money to re-sign Jake Gardiner.

A team with Jake Gardiner, Morgan Rielly, Jake Muzzin and Tyson Barrie would be unreal to watch.  All the games might be 8-7, but you’d never be bored.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have more than enough guys to fill out the bottom two spots of the team on the cheap, and having a top four consisting of pretty much 4 x #1 defenseman (including one of the best in the entire league) would make them, probably, the NHL’s best team.

Let’s hope that the Leafs sign Jake Gardiner before anyone else does.