Former Toronto Maple Leafs forward Fraser Minten is turning into the one who got away, as he signed a seven-year, $50.4M contract extension with the Boston Bruins today.
Gary Bettman needs to implement a rule where the Leafs and Bruns can no longer make trades because Toronto has seemingly never won one. The most famous example was the Tuuka Rask deal, where the team traded a future Vezina Trophy winner and kept netminder Justin Pogge, who only played seven games with the blue-and-white.
Fast-forward 19 years later and the Leafs are kicking themselves once again for making a horrible trade with the Bruins. As the team prepared for a long playoff run, they decided to trade Fraser Minten and a first-round pick for Brandon Carlo.
At 6-foot-5, 227 pounds, Carlo was going to provide the Leafs some much needed size on the blue-line, but instead, he only played 75 games in Toronto before being traded to St. Louis for multiple third-round picks. To make things worse, the 22-year-old Minten has already played more NHL games than Carlo in that timeframe, playing 82 games last year, scoring 17 goals and registering 35 points.
Minten signs a 7-year extension with the Bruins
The point totals don't jump out to make him a player worth $7.2M AAV, but his hockey smarts and potential should make him a solid number-two center for the next decade. Toronto has a solid 1-2 punch in Auston Matthews and John Tavares, but Minten as the third-line center beside either Dakota Joshua, Nick Paul or Easton Cowan could have made this line-up way better than having Teddy Blueger or Colton Sissons.
You're never going to win every trade you make but the most frustrating thing about moves like this is that you dealt a player you drafted and developed and gifted him to a divisional rival. If they shipped him to the west coast in a move that was similar to the Trevor Moore trade, then it's much easier to digest, but trading him to a team that has beaten the Leafs in the most devastating way in the playoffs for the past 15 years is incredibly frustrating.
Kudos to Minten for securing this contract, because he was a very likeable player, but he should have been a Leaf for a very long time and could have been the next wave of solid forwards, in addition to Matthew Knies, Easton Cowan and Gavin McKenna. Instead, we'll probably watch Minten score a Game 7 overtime winning goal against the Leafs and have him break our hearts like every other Bruins game.
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