The Absolute Worst Toronto Maple Leafs Trades No One’s Heard About
By Jeff Borsuk
Tyler Biggs
Former Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke had a type.
He likes his hockey players the same way he likes his coffee, with no sugar but plenty of truculence. It’s likely why he and the Leafs decided to move up in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft.
In order for the Leafs to get their preferred player with the 22nd overall selection, they had to trade the Anaheim Ducks a pair of picks.
The Buds got the 22nd pick in exchange for the 30th and 39th picks. Burke was likely ecstatic when his team used their first round selection to acquire Tyler Biggs.
The 6’3″, 215 lbs right-winger may have been perfect for Burke, but not the NHL. Unfortunately, Biggs never took a shift in the league. While he did play in the AHL, it’s the furthest he managed to get in his hockey career before hanging up his skates for good.
Meanwhile, the picks the Toronto Maple Leafs sent the Ducks in exchange for Biggs had far more success. With the 30th pick, Anaheim took Rickard Rakell.
He’s had a spectacular career, which included back-to-back 33 and 34-goal campaigns for the Ducks. Rakell currently plays for the Pittsburgh Penguins. This season, he played a full compliment of 82 games where he recorded 28 goals and 32 assists. Rakell’s now skated in 651 career NHL games where he’s scored 186 goals and tallied 226 assists for a total of 412 points.
If that was all the Leafs gave up for Biggs, it would be bad enough, but it’s not.
With the 39th selection, Toronto watched the Ducks take goaltender John Gibson. He remains with Anaheim to this day having played over 400 NHL games. He owns the second-most wins in the organization’s history with 180 of them. (Jean-Sebastien Giguere is the franchise leader with 206 wins.)