Should the Toronto Maple Leafs Trade for Adam Larsson?

Since the Toronto Maple Leafs won’t be playing hockey for another four months, trade rumors have been buzzing.

The Toronto Maple Leafs had an unsuccessful season, to say the least.

After losing to the Columbus Blue Jackets in the qualifying series, many fans want movement. When you have $40 million of a $81.5 million salary cap allocated to four forwards and you don’t win, riots happen.

Not literally, like what happened in Vancouver, but figuratively across the internet. Even though the Leafs defense has always been ridiculed, they played fine against Columbus.  Actually, they were better than fine.

Freddie Andersen played exceptional. The team only averaged 2.4 goals per game and if it wasn’t for the outrageous shooting percentage by the Blue-and-White, they would have won the series.

We can yell and scream at the fact that if they played that series 100 times, the Leafs would have probably won 95 percent of the time, but the fact is, they didn’t win.

And if you don’t win, you need to make changes.

Should the Leafs Make a Trade with Edmonton Oilers?

Can I let you in on a secret?

The Leafs need a right-handed shot defenseman. 

Oh, you already knew that? Okay, moving on.

The Leafs have more than enough offense to win games, but they need to tighten up defensively to go far in the playoffs.

The Edmonton Oilers are essentially the Leafs of the Western Conference.

They have two of the best offensive players in the NHL (Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl) but they don’t have any playoff success.

The Oilers defense isn’t much better than the Leafs, but they also don’t have the secondary scoring that Toronto has.

For example, Zach Hyman, John Tavares, Alex Kerfoot, William Nylander, Andreas Johnsson, Kasperi Kapanen, Morgan Rielly, Ilya Mikheyev, Marner or Matthews can all score 20-goals in a season.

That’s 10 offensive weapons.

The Oilers unfortunately don’t have that luxury. Besides McDavid and Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, James Neal and maybe Alex Chiasson can score 20 for them.

So here’s the trade to improve both teams:

• Toronto Maple Leafs acquire: Adam Larsson ($4.16 million)
• Edmonton Oilers acquire: Andreas Johnsson ($3.4 million) and Pierre Engvall ($1.25 million)
• Salary-Cap Implications: Toronto saves $490K

In this all-Sweden deal, the Toronto Maple Leafs would be getting a right-handed defenseman they need, while the Oilers are getting two young forwards to complement their secondary scoring.

The only reason why this trade may never happen is because the Oilers traded away Taylor Hall (Yes, Hart Trophy winner, Taylor Hall) for Larsson a few years ago and they got absolutely roasted for it.

When you give up an MVP for a second-pairing defenseman, it’s very hard to then trade that defenseman you acquired for a few wingers.

However, if the Leafs acquired Larsson, they would be getting an above-average defenseman and someone who is far from flashy. He’s not going to contribute much offensively, but instead will be relied upon as a stay-at-home defenseman, which is great for Toronto.

Larsson’s Corsi Rating has been below 50 percent for most of his time in Edmonton, but he wouldn’t be asked to do much on this Leafs roster, so it should rise if he joined the team.

It’s a very interesting trade proposition and it could benefit both teams tremendously.

Who knows if Larsson is the savior of Leafs right defense, but it sure is fun talking about.