The Toronto Maple Leafs are yet to upgrade their team ahead of Friday's Trade Deadline.
The Toronto Maple Leafs failed to upgrade their team last year and it turned out to be one of the biggest disasters in franchise history as they eventually lost in game seven overtime of the first round, and even a modest addition could have gotten them into the next round.
This year the pressure is even higher because Mitch Marner and John Tavares are pending unrestricted free-agents, which in itself is a major organizational failure (at least with Marner).
And, as Treliving watches from the side-lines (possibly terrified to act since he practically build the Florida Panthers himself, by accident, when, in two separate trades he gave them Sam Bennett and Matthew Tkachuk) the Leafs rivals are loading up.
Biggest Rivals Keep Loading Up While Maple Leafs Do Nothing
Breaking news this afternoon as Tampa sent two first round picks and a second round pick to the Seattle Kraken in exchange for Oliver Bjorkstrand and Yanni Gourde.
This is a great upgrade for Tampa who lose nothing off their current roster and instantly get much better. Bjorkstrand is a super-underrated player and this is a significant move. The second rounder in this deal used to belong to the Leafs, but they traded it to Utah in the Nick Ritchie and Ilya Lyubushkin trade. Utah traded it to Tampa and they have now traded it to Seattle.
The Rangers added J.T Miller, the Hurricanes added Mikko Rantanen and the Panthers added Seth Jones. Add in Tampa and four of the East's eight playoff teams have made absolutely massive upgrdades.
The Leafs, Capitals and Devils have done nothing.
So that means that four of the seven teams that the Leafs will need to beat in order to get to the Stanley Cup Finals have made major upgrades. The Tampa one is especially hurtful to the Leafs because the players involved would have been good additions for the Leafs.
I wouldn't have been to excited to get Yanni Gourde, but he's a great player any team would be happy to have. Same goes with Bjorkstrand. These are just solid upgrades, if not exciting ones. I want the Leafs to go bigger but there is no doubt that they had interest in Gourde - I would even prefer him over Ryan O'Reilly, Brayden Schenn or Scott Laughton.
As I've said previously, the Leafs need to go after a top pairing defenseman. I wouldn't hate it if they added a star forward like Brock Boeser, but realistically, I think they could get by with their current forwards just by brining up Fraser Minten and Alex Steeves and moving out Jarnkrok, Domi and Kampf for cap space.