Toronto Maple Leafs: Most Likely to be Traded Next

Frederik Andersen

There’s no doubt that Andersen is an extremely valuable asset to this Maple Leafs team. It can be said with certainty that if the Lefas didn’t have Andersen in net, they would be nowhere near as good as they currently are and wouldn’t have won as many games as they did.

If he’s that good and valuable, why move him then? Simply because he’s on the last year of his contract making $5 million and it’s unlikely they would be able to re-sign him past this year due to the limited amount of money they have to spend.

Andersen had the worst statistical year of his career but he still played fairly well, especially considering how weak defensively the Leafs are. He went 29-13-7 with a 2.85 goals against average and a save percentage of .909, both career-low numbers.

Andersen would benefit any team in the league that’s in need of a goaltender but he only makes sense for contenders with cap space to go after since he’d be a rental acquisition. I recently wrote a piece on potential trade packages for Andersen and where he could land.

If the Toronto Maple Leafs do end up trading Andersen, they would suffer in net as they’d have to hand over the reins to Jack Campbell or one of their goalies waiting in their system in Joseph Woll or Kasimir Kaskisuo who struggled in his NHL debut.

There’s also the possibility they trade or sign a goalie although it would be for less than $5 million most likely as the whole point of trading Andersen in the first place was to free up cap space.