The Toronto Maple Leafs Should Not Have Any Interest in Dakota Joshua Rumour
The Toronto Maple Leafs are the centre of the hockey universe.
And as such, if a player is potentially available, the Toronto Maple Leafs will inevitably be linked to that player.
On Thursday, the Canucks were "Not Close" to signing Dakota Joshua.
On Friday, he was interested in joining the Toronto Maple Leafs.
And so she goes.
The Toronto Maple Leafs Should Not Have Any Interest in Dakota Joshua Rumour
The Leafs were the team that originally drafted Joshua back in 2014.
Joshua never signed a contract with the Leafs. They had his rights for five years, but in 2019 they let him go. He never even played for the Marlies. (stats naturalstattrick.com).
Since then, Joshua had a cup of coffee with the St. Louis Blues before signing with the Vancouver Canucks and playing 79 games last year the age of 27.
It's a great story, and Joshua had a solid second year with the Canucks scoring 18 goals in 63 games.
That's nice depth scoring, but he shot 21% so lets not go crazy. Auston Matthews has never finished with a shooting percentage higher than 18% which he did just once, as a sophomore, so again, let's not get crazy here.
The Toronto Maple Leafs should have absolutely no interest in this player. If he were to sign for the league minimum, he would be a great addition.
But he's a 28 year-old un-restricted free-agent, and he will cost way more than that. Signing mid-range players who are not stars is the most expensive and least valuable thing a team can do.
The Leafs have a whole bunch of young players - Alex Steeves, Pontus Holmberg, Nick Abruzzesse, Connor Dewar, Roni Hirvonen, Nick Robertson, Matthew Knies, Bobby McMann - who need ice time and don't need to be blocked by an unspectacular depth player.
If anything, the Leafs need to clear the decks for their young players and get rid of guys like David Kampf, Calle Jarnkrok, Ryan Reaves and Noah Gregor. They should have no interest in overspending on free-agents to play at the bottom of their lineup.
This rumous is silly and the Leafs definitely wouldn't bother under Kyle Dubas. Brad Treliving is more of a traditional hockey guy, so maybe he actually is interested in making this kind of obviously silly errror, but he shoudn't be.
Dakota Joshua was a nice story for the Canucks. On his league-minimum contract he was great value. Unfortunately, these types of players lose basically all their value when they sign expensive second contracts.
Furthermore, never, ever should you sign a player who has a career year near the age of 30 when he shoots a better and more effient shooting percentage than Auston Matthews.
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Huge red flag. Hard pass.