Before the NHL Trade Deadline, the Toronto Maple Leafs traded a first round pick and Nikita Grebenkin for Scott Laughton, a 4th and a 6th.
As part of the trade, the Flyers retained some of Laughton's salary, making his cap hit on the Toronto Maple Leafs just $1.5 million. It's slightly over the league minimum, which is all that Laughton is worth, it's not too bad.
When grading the trade in real time, as it happened, I said that it would depend on what else the Leafs did. If the they went out and picked up a star, it would be an alright move. If they failed to significantly upgrade their team, then it was a bad move.
Ultimately they failed to upgrade their team, and adding Scott Laughton and Brandon Carlo, and nothing else, is an absolute joke and a total failure. The Leafs have played well enough to deserve some upgrades, and their fans definitely deserved more.
But Brad Treliving is an awful general manager, so what can you do?
Scott Laughton is off to the roughest start imaginable with the Maple Leafs
Scott Laughton is a left winger who doesn't score and isn't particularly great at defending. He's a decent fourth liner on a really good team. The Leafs got him to be their third line centre.
If you are curious how it's been going, well, Scott Laughton played left win in his third game, and also somehow led the team in offensive zone faceoffs. Not exactly what you want to hear about the defensive centre your team just paid through the nose to get.
The Leafs lost two of their three games since the trade, and they definitely deserved to lose the one game they did win. It goes without saying that Laughton did not record a point in any of these games.
Game One: Laughton plays just under 11 minutes, posts a 29% Corsi, gets outscored 2-0 and posts a Ryan Reaves-esque 20% xGoals %.
Game Two: Laughton again played just under 11 minutes. This time his Corsi was 13% (that is almost impossibly bad), scoring chances were 4-0 for Utah, and he had an Expected Goals rating of 6%. That isn't a typo - six percent is really what he did.
Game Three: The coach already ran out of patience for him at 3C. Laughton played parts of this game on the second line, where he was not effective. At least he wasn't on for a goal against, but the Leafs were still crushed when he played, and he posted a 35% Expected Goals rating (stats naturalstattrick.com).
Of course Laughton can turn it around - it's only been three games. But if you thought this started out as a bad trade, it looks like you were right. With their jobs on the line, this is what Brendan Shanahan and Brad Treliving accomplished. See you on the golf course, boys.