Toronto Maple Leafs seem to have gone on a bit of a vacation, but are sure to be more active as the summer winds down.
Though it’s seemingly been a while since we heard a good Toronto Maple Leafs rumour, there was a little one out there on the weekend.
Perhaps – and I mean, who knows? – the Leafs are interested in Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Andrew Peake?
It could be something the Leafs are engaging in, or it could just be that someone on Twitter had what people thought was a great idea and it became a thing (see below).
Either way, it’s worth discussing.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Finally a New Trade Rumour
The Leafs have a terrible blue-line at the moment, one that lacks an elite upper echelon player, and one which lacks physicality.
I still feel Andrew Peeke is currently the best trade option on D. Young, cheap, controllable contract ($2.75M x 3) who's a RHD who hits and blocks shots and should have a trade value lower than someone like Pesce.
— Leafs Updates (@LeafsUpdates21) August 7, 2023
CBJ has a logjam on D and could be willing to listen.
Trading for Andrew Peeke wouldn’t address the former issue, but it would the latter.
Peeke is a 25 year-old right-shot defender who is 6’3 and 210 lbs.
Considering the Leafs lost both Luke Schenn and Justin Holl, and only replaced them with John Klingberg, this is the kind of rumour that just makes sense – if hitting and being huge was the only thing that mattered, at least.
The Leafs might want to have their analytics department go over this one before deciding anything, because his stats are brutal.
Last year the Blue-Jackets were outsocred 91-44 with him on the ice, which is a GF% of 33%.
Yikes.
However, he had a PDO of 95, which is extremely unlucky, and goalies had a save percentage of just 88% when he was on the ice. This suggest he isn’t as bad as the numbers make him seem.
Opposing teams, however, feasted when he played. Columbus got destroyed in shots, shot-attempts and scoring chances whenever Peeke was deployed.
He was deployed on the second-pairing and his most common partner was Vladislav Gavrikov.
Peek’s numbers are horrible, and pretty much the worst, or second worst, on Columbus in every category. In most categories, Eric Gudbranson had worse numbers, but he is a well known terrible player. (stats naturalstatrick.com).
Peake was starting only the 3rd most defensive zone starts per game on CBJ and even if we account for his bad team, bad teammates and bad goalie, his numbers are horrendous.
This is a player that the Toronto Maple Leafs should not have interest in at all.
There are for sure players on the Marlies would could step in and do the same, and they wouldn’t have a nearly $3 million cap hit. If the Leafs were going to spend $3 million on Andrew Peak, they should have just signed the significantly better Justin Holl.
Peek isn’t any good and the Leafs should not have any interest in trading for him, if for no other reason than you should never pay non-stars anything above the league minimum if you can at all help it.
Since it would likely mean losing TJ Brodie to make this happen, this is a non-starter. Based on other Treliving moves to date, I can’t rule this out. The Toronto Maple Leafs do, however, maintain one of the biggest analytics departments in the NHL and I can’t see them having interest in this player.