32 Potential Trade Options for the Toronto Maple Leafs

Filip Forsberg

Filip Forsberg is a player the Toronto Maple Leafs are unlikely to acquire, but I suppose stranger things have happened.

A bargain at $6 million, Forsberg has one year remaining on his contract and the addition of him to the already offensively elite Leafs would be wild.  It would also be expensive, and it’s worth wondering if adding to the team’s strength – as opposed to addressing their main weakness (it’s still team defense) – is the way to go.

Perhaps its a stretch to call Forsberg one-dimensional, but his JFresh player card shows that his value is almost entirely offensive.  In the last three seasons, Forsberg is better than 86% of forwards offensively, but only better than 44% defensively.  The low ranking could just be from one really bad year, it’s hard to say.

Doesn’t really matter though – however you do it (mostly offense, a combo, or mostly defense) it really only matters if your team wins when you are on the ice, and Forsberg’s team tends to. He is a fully elite player and it would be completely awesome to acquire him.

It’s been four years since Forsberg scored 30 goals, but he’s still only 26 and his inability to match his early career numbers has been because of injuries that prevented him from playing 67 games or less in each of the last three seasons (obviously for different reasons this year will make a fourth).

You have to figure that the Leafs are set on offense and that their limited dollars and assets would go alot farther if they tried to shore their team up with defensive players, but you can’t really exaggerate how cool it would be to get someone like Forsberg.  This is the kind of acquisition – depending on the cost, that could put the Leafs over the top.