The Toronto Maple Leafs are reportedly looking to improve their roster as soon as possible and that may mean moving on from one particular defenseman: Heavy-hitter, hard-nosed blueliner Simon Benoit.
While we don't particularly enjoy thinking about the Leafs parting ways with someone who has been a joy to watch hit unsuspecting forwards as hard as possible, it might just come down to a numbers game. As The Athletic's James Mirtle wrote in a recent mailbag, the Leafs are looking for more of a puck-moving presence on the blue line and that should then result in them moving on from one of the more defensively minded defensemen.
"The other thing is the Leafs have six pretty solid established NHL D right now in Chris Tanev, Jake McCabe, Morgan Rielly, Carlo, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Simon Benoit. They’d like to somehow get another puck mover back there, which would mean moving one of the more defensive types out," Mirtle wrote.
"Part of the reason they got hemmed in against the Panthers in the playoffs was their inability to handle Florida’s forecheck, and that comes back to the Leafs’ struggles breaking out, moving the puck and maintaining pressure in the offensive zone. Treliving and Berube have to solve that somehow, or they’ll just be hoping to get luckier next spring."
Yeah, that about sums it up. Aside from Rielly -- and even that is debatable after his inability to really be his puck-moving self last season -- there is no real sense of forward movement as the focus on the blue line. It's all about trying to suffocate opposing offense instead of creating their own. And when looking at that group of McCabe, Tanev, Ekman-Larsson, Carlo, and Benoit, the youngest player of the crew in Benoit, is also the only one that doesn't have some form of trade protection.
It can be an easy, swift move for the Maple Leafs to make. Sure, they just signed him to a three-year deal last year but with a cap hit of just $1.35 million for two more seasons, it would be an easily absorbable contract for the acquiring team.
Moving out Benoit and adding this hypothetical puck-moving defenseman in either the same or a separate trade would suddenly change the dynamic of this blue line for the better. It does feel like overkill to have someone like the 26-year-old defenseman in the lineup when Tanev, McCabe, and Carlo all exist here too.
Should we expect this move to happen in the coming days? Probably not. But we know Leafs general manager Brad Treliving has not stopped thinking of ways to improve this roster for now and the future -- so acquiring this player type that they need is probably not going to happen closer to the trade deadline.
It is just so easy to predict, barring some unexpected run of looking like prime Scott Stevens to start the season, that Benoit is the odd man out in this scenario.