Toronto Maple Leafs: Cody Ceci Isn’t Guaranteed to Make the Team

The Toronto Maple Leafs acquired Cody Ceci from the Ottawa Senators earlier this month in exchange for Nikita Zaitsev and Connor Brown.

Along with Ronald Hainsey, Nikita Zaitsev was one of the worst deployed players in all of the NHL last season, thanks to Toronto Maple Leafs coach Mike Babcock.

With complete disregard to both measured results and common sense, Babcock used Hainsey and Zaitsev on his top two pairings all season long.

The Leafs are automatically better with both players having moved on to the Senators.

But one thing apparently needs to be pointed out: Cody Ceci is not an improvement on Nikita Zaitsev, and he shouldn’t be used by the Leafs next season in a top four role.

In fact, while Morgan Rielly, Jake Muzzin, Tyson Barrie are a lock to play for the Leafs next season, there’s no guarantee that Ceci even makes the roster, let alone is gifted a top four role as many pundits seem to think.

Cody Ceci and the Toronto Maple Leafs

Cody Ceci is a right handed defenseman with size and draft pedigree.  He is 25 years old and has an expiring contract (he signed a one-year deal with the Leafs after being acquired).

That makes him one of the most tradable players in the NHL.  The Toronto Maple Leafs have to sign Mitch Marner and then after that, they’re pretty much up against the salary cap.

Much flexibility could be had from flipping Codi Ceci, and they could even get a half-decent asset out of the deal.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that they keep him, that he makes the team in camp and performs well – stranger things have happened.  But given his past performance, this seems unlikely.

I’ve seen a lot of people mention that Ceci was on a bad team while disregarding all the bad statistics that he has.  Unfortunately, last year the Senators did worse when he was on the ice, than when he was on the bench.

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Shot-attempts, shots, scoring chances and goals were all worse when Ceci took the ice for the Senators in 2018-19.  His counting stats might be low due to being on a bad team, but you can’t discount the fact that the bad team was worse when he played.

Still, there are positives – both his two most common partners (Maxime Lajoie, and Tomas Chabot) did better when partnered with Ceci than anyone else.  He is still just 25, and while that usually means a player is done growing, it doesn’t always (see Bautista, Jose).

Bottom line: The above chart is for three years (used with permission from evolving-hockey.com) and a large sample size of the past is usually far more predictive of the future than anything else.

Based on what we know about Codi Ceci, there is no reason to suspect that he will beat out Travis Dermott (injured otherwise he’s an automatic top-four option), Justin Holl, Martin Marincin, Ben Harpur, Kevin Gravel, Andreas Borgman, Timothy Liljegren, Rasmus Sandin and whoever else there is in cap for a spot on the Toronto Maple Leafs blue line.

His salary is a sunk cost. I think it’s safe to assume that everyone in the Leafs front office is familiar with the idea that it is a logical fallacy that you have to use something just because you spent money on it.  If the Leafs think they can get more out of a player making less money, Ceci’s salary isn’t going to automatically get him a job.

It’s sort of ridiculous that a player this bad is getting automatically inserted into the top-four by fans and commentators alike.  Best situation for Ceci is that he makes the team and get’s to play with Rielly or Muzzin.  There is, however, no reason to assume he is automatically better than the seven other defensemen who’ll be competing for a job this fall.

We could very much see Cody Ceci in a top-four role this season – for the Toronto Marlies.