Toronto Maple Leafs Rival Trade Grades
The first trade of the week saw the Canadiens acquire Patrik Laine from the Blue Jackets and get paid to do so! The Habs recieved Laine and a second round pick to take the 26 year old former second overal pick and his nearly $9 million dollar contract.
To acquire Laine, who has 50 goal potential if he's healthy, the Canadiens only gave up Jordan Harris, a left handed defenseman roughly equal to the Leafs trading Timothy Liljgren. I wouldn't hate it if the Leafs got a 2nd round pick for Liljegren at this point, let alone a 50 goal lottery ticket.
The Canadiens are unlikely to compete for much during the two remaining years on Laine's contract and so the best thing they could do here is shelter him at 5v5 and give him as much power-play time as he can handle, then flip him at the deadline for even more assets. This is exactly what they did with Sean Monohan, ironically signed by the poorly run Blue Jackets.
The Canadiens get an A+ here for improving their roster today, adding a bonus draft pick for tomorrow, adding a potential lottery ticket which they can either use or cash in for nearly no risk, since they weren't hoping to compete this year and had the cap space.
This is just a smart move from every angle for Montreal. As for Columbus, they paid to give a way a potentially elite player and get out of $18 million dollars in real cash and cap-hit. It just looks cheap. If they wanted to make their team better they wouldn't give away draft picks to save money, they'd eat that money and get paid for it.
The Blue Jackets get an F for being cheap. A smarter team would have worked out a double-retention move and traded Laine to a contender for actual assets.