Should the Toronto Maple Leafs Trade or Keep Kasperi Kapanen?

The Toronto Maple Leafs  may be looking to free up some cap space for next season, depending on how the salary cap looks.

The Toronto Maple Leafs currently have Kasperi Kapanen, Andreas Johnsson, and Alex  Kerfoot making over $3 million dollars per year, and they are the most likely candidates to move if the team needs to create cap space.

These three contracts are all team friendly, and would have no shortage of suitors throughout the league.

The most valuable in trade (but not likely the player the Leafs value the most) is Kasperi Kapanen, so today I will look into whether it’s a good idea to trade him or keep him.

Kasperi Kapanen’s Contract

During the 2019 offseason Kasperi Kapanen re-signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs at 3 years x $3.2M. (Stats from CapFriendly.com)

Kapanen’s contract compared to others like Johnsson, and Kerfoot is the cheapest and shortest, and you have to figure he’d bring back a strong return.

2018-19 stats… 78 GP – 20 G – 24 A – 44 PTS

2019-20 stats… 69 GP – 13 G – 23 A – 36 PTS

Career stats… 202 GP – 41 G – 49 A – 90 PTS

Kapanen had a 52% CF this year, but also a negative expected goal percentage.  His speed and tenacity help the team, but he didn’t exactly have the best season.  (Naturalstattrick.com).

Kasperi Kapanen is a 23 year old right winger who plays on the Toronto Maple Leafs and he pretty much just wrapped up his second full season in the NHL.

Although he has only played two full seasons in the NHL he has played a total of just over 200 games over a span of five years dating back to the 2015-16 season. (Stats from NHL.com).

How Important is Kapanen to the Maple Leafs?

Although Kasperi Kapanen isn’t looked at as a top end player like Matthews, Marner, Tavares and Nylander, he still is important to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

He has the potential to be a second line winger in the NHL, however the time he has spent as second line right winger on the Maple Leafs hasn’t gone to plan as he struggled for the majority of the time playing top six minutes. His role in Toronto has been a third line winger for the most part and it has gone well in my opinion.

In his first full season last year he hit the 20 goal mark and in this past season (19-20 season) he had only 13, so obviously a big drop in goals considering he only missed one game of the season and still had 12 games left to play as he was on pace to finish the season with 15 goals.

Should Kapanen be Traded?

All in all I believe the Toronto Maple Leafs should not trade Kasperi Kapanen and keep him for the remainder of his contract with the team and if all cap problems are somewhat solved then they should try and re-sign him at the end of his current contract.

Although part of me believes that the team should trade him too because he can most likely fetch more in a trade for a potential defensemen that the team desperately needs.

Plus if the Toronto Maple Leafs trade Kapanen it isn’t too bad because they have a good amount of natural right wingers on the team unlike natural left wingers but they do have a decent amount of players who can play both wings so it wouldn’t be the end of the world for the team.

If you trade a Kapanen the question is who would fill the third line right wing spot and the answer is, most likely Pierre Engvall or newly signed KHL player Alexander Barabanov.

If you trade a Johnsson, who would fill that second line left wing spot and or the third line left wing spot? It would definitely be Ilya Mikheyev on the second line or if Johnsson was confirmed to stay on that third line with Kerfoot then a guy like Engvall would most likely take his spot.

So I am on both sides of the fence for trading and keeping Kapanen but I am leaning more on the keep him side. He can score, he’s fast, and he has a gritty side to his game that has been evolving in the past couple of months. As well he truly has the potential to be a second line winger someday in the NHL.

What do you guys think? Should the Toronto Maple Leafs trade Kasperi Kapanen only if it means bringing in someone who makes the team better, or are they better off packaging a player like Andreas Johnsson to fetch someone else and keep Kasperi Kapanen?