When Will the Toronto Maple Leafs Trade for Jesse Puljujarvi?

The Toronto Maple Leafs are on  a quest to improve their team and stay under the salary cap.

One way for the Toronto Maple Leafs to do that is to take advantage of the NHL’s stup…..shall we say “less smart” teams ?

And there is no team struggling more to build a roster in the 21st Century than the Edmonton Oilers, who have the worst GM in professional sports.

Now I realize the Oilers made the Final Four, but that is because of two players their current GM had no part in acquiring, and the game of hockey  is such that if you put those two players on any team (and I mean this quite literally) you would have an instant Cup Contender.

If you don’t believe me about Ken Holland, just google the contracts he gave Zach Hyman and Darnell Nurse.  Recall that he was fine having Mike Smith in net this year, or that his blue-line features Tyson Barrie and Cody Ceci.

Ken Holland won’t be fired because the Oilers made the Final Four and that’s just bad luck for them. It also means that Jesse Puljujarvi is likely going to get traded.

To which the Toronto Maple Leafs should be first in line.

Toronto Maple Leafs and Jesse Puljujarvi

The 23 year-old former 4th overall pick had a great year in Edmonton, but was snake-bitten when it came to racking up points.

The argument against Puljujarvi is this: He spent 600 of his 900 minutes with McDavid and therefore his “good play” is a mirage, and it’s far more important that he didn’t score as much as someone playing 600 minutes with McDavid should. (stats naturalstattrick.com).

Now, this is a very lame, one-sided argument.  It ignores a lot of information in favor of being an easy-to-swallow narrative.  If you’re a casual fan, maybe you shouldn’t care about things like this, but if you’re running the Toronto Maple Leafs, you want to be on the lookout for teams that employ this antiquated way of thinking.

Here are Puljujarvi’s on-ice numbers from this year (meaning Edmonton’s stats when he played): 59% Shot-Attempts, 57% of shots, 65% of goals, 60%  xGoals.

14 goals and 36 points in 65 games does not sound very good, but let’s keep a few things in mind: his personal shooting percentage was only 6.87% and 25 of his 36 points came at 5v5, where he posted a 1.6 P/60, which isn’t great but isn’t horrible either.

The thing about Puljujarvi is that yes, he has the tools to score, so you’d like to see him do it more, but he’s an elite defender.  When he plays with McDavid,  his job isn’t to score. You might have noticed that McDavid doesn’t need any help scoring.

But a lot of people talked about McDavid’s defense being better this year, and maybe that’s because of Puljujarvi.

Defensive players don’t cost a lot to resign.  Stupid teams will usually give you a discount to boot! He’s an RFA who you can probably sign for $3 or $4 million on a long-term deal, and he’s only 23 and has a ton of upside.

Kerfoot and a first? Who says no?  Certainly not the Toronto Maple Leafs, who clearly will covet this player.