Toronto Maple Leafs Timothy Liljegren Trade Grade: Abomination

There is a reason the Toronto Maple Leafs were recently named one of the most poorly run teams in the NHL by both NHL executives and fans (the Athletic).

That reason is that the Toronto Maple Leafs are a team with no semblance of a plan, one which seemingly makes moves indipendent of any type of long-term plan, intelligent thought process or critical thinking.

On Wednesday they finally put an end to a sad saga they created, for no reason, that saw the team tank the value of a valuable top-four right-handed defenseman and end up with a worse team and not much to show for it.

The Leafs traded Timothy Liljegren, after sitting him out for nine of the season's first ten games, to the San Jose Sharks for essentially nothing on. Technically, they got a third and a sixth round pick, as well as a useless roster player, but that is a terrible return for a 17th overal pick with 200 games of sucessful NHL minutes on his resume.

Toronto Maple Leafs Timothy Liljegren Trade Grade: Abomination

This horrendous display of management prowess would at least be excusable if the Leafs had a better player than Liljegren taking his place on the roster, but they don't.

What happened is that the Leafs arbitrarily decided that only big defenseman have any value, and decided to stop playing Liljegren even though they had spent a first round pick, multiple years, millions of dollars and a ton of effort to develop him.

Liljegren isn't a star, but he could still develop into one. He is only 25 and has 200 NHL games of experience where he uniformly wins his minutes. Occaisionally he could be a frustrating player because he doesn't hit and doesn't score, so a lot of the times you notice him it's for negative reasons. That said, he always wins his minutes in the aggregate, and there is immense value in that, whether the Toronto Maple Leafs choose to recognize it or not.

While Oliver Ekman-Larsson got off to a strong start with the Leafs, he is nothing more than a third pairing guy at this point in his career. Liljegren is a better option for the top four than he is, because he is simply a better player at this point in his career. I think it is a very short-sighted bet by the Leafs to think OEL is the better option going forward.

By not playing Liljegren, the Leafs made them selves worse. Liljgren is a better player than OEL, Benoit, Timmins, Myers and anyone else the Leafs might choose to put out there. At worst, he was probably their third or fourth best defenseman. He was also their only one with any upside.

The Leafs were not interested in that upside, and for cap space to play bad edge-of-the-roster players, they just sacrificed their only defenseman with upside, and one of the best puck-movers on their roster. This is a terrible move in every way.

Though the Leafs got a decent haul considering they completely sabatoged the value of their own player, this trade is a joke. The Leafs are a worse team today than when training camp opened, and the cap space wouldn't even be needed is they were smart enough to get Kampf, Reaves, Timmins and Jarnkrok off of the roster in the summer like they should have.

Overall, this is a perplexing trade that makes the Leafs worse and has no value whatsoever. A 3rd and a 6th? Big deal. They should get a 6th just for agreeing to pay Matt Benning, so the trade is more or less Timothy Liljegren for a third rounder and that is absolute crappolla my friend.

This trade gets an F- but only because there is no lower acceptable grade. What a joke.