The draft and free agency are almost here, and it feels like news is moving a mile a minute around the NHL.
I planned to finish the UFA series with a Part 4 on defensemen, but after the Maple Leafs acquired Darren Raddysh and Emil Andrae, it no longer feels necessary.
The Leafs have too many defensemen as is and will already need to clear a body unless they want to run Andrae as their #7 to start the year—which wouldn’t make much sense to me. They’d need to clear two to consider a UFA, and they already signed the top UFA defenseman anyway. If they do move out more than one defenseman, it should be because they are acquiring a defenseman via trade in some capacity. While there are a few defensemen who would help them in free agency, it’s largely not worth it for them to move what they have in order to pay UFA prices on the market.
They should also leave some room for a Marlie to start as the seventh defenseman. William Villeneuve had a very productive AHL playoff run, while Henry Thrun and Dakota Mermis were used in all the critical defensive situations, including the final minute of the Calder Cup Finals (Ben Danford, whom many seem to be penciling into a roster spot to start the season, didn’t touch the ice in the final minutes of that one-goal game, by the way). Both Villeneuve and Thrun are RFAs, while Mermis is still under contract. Between the three, they have enough there for a seventh defenseman spot to start the season and to push a player like Andrae.
I will also note that a few players on that list were rendered moot by the Leafs‘ additions, such as Nick Blankenburg (no need for two small defensemen with Andrae in the mix), Tony DeAngelo (no point with Raddysh), and Connor Murphy, who was already re-signed.
Instead, we’ll shift our attention to some of the chatter out there, and I’ll flag a few trade candidates in the notes section at the end.
On Matthew Knies
John Chayka has discussed Matthew Knies a number of times now, but the rumours won’t go away. In his most recent availability, the Leafs GM said of Knies:
“On any type of trade speculation, I think I was pretty direct on Matthew Knies in my opening press conference. The statement still stands. In my job as GM, we will evaluate everything, but that is the job.
Again, the idea that we are going to improve the roster by moving a top young player… I mean, anything is possible, but I guess it is not probable. No doubt, I think it makes for good writing and interest for people, but as we think about our team and how we can improve, that is a tough bar to hurdle.”
Elliotte Friedman recently described it as: Knies is only getting traded if you look at the deal and immediately go, “Ah, okay, I understand why that happened.”
That jives with what Chayka is saying—sure, we’ll do our homework, but this is a very good young player, so you need to overpay to convince us to move him.
All of that makes sense.
Some will argue: why even take calls on Knies? He’s young, very good, loves Toronto, has size, has produced some big moments already, and is cost-controlled.
I don’t want to sit here and pick his game apart, but there are some fair concerns, too. While he’s productive, he hasn’t shown any real ability to drive a line. He has been a high-end complementary winger rather than an actual line driver (his numbers without Matthews over the past three years have been abysmal—outchanced, outshot, and outscored). Though he’s big, he’s not particularly physically imposing and hasn’t stood up for teammates, including after Easton Cowan was put through the net by 5-foot-10 Ozzy Wiesblatt early in his career.
Additionally, Knies not only doesn’t play a premium position but also plays the one position where the Leafs have some depth and are about to draft a player first overall. There is a scenario where it does make sense, especially if they can add at a premium position—center or defense—by doing so. We all saw the Bowen Byram deal, right? You have to listen. It’s a fireable offense not to.
Again, I really like Knies, and I’ll be happy if he’s on the team to start next season. He has some pieces of his game to iron out, including his speed dropping off last season, but he is far from a problem on this team. If a GM wants to pay through the nose for him, though, then it’s pretty simple.
On Sergei Bobrovsky
I think there is legit fire to this smoke about Sergei Bobrovsky.
When the Leafs traded Joseph Woll, we noted that while the Leafs’ remaining goalies — Anthony Stolarz, Dennis Hildeby, and Artur Akhtyamov — have talent, the range of possibilities is basically 0 to 100. Stolarz is good but has never proven he can stay healthy. Both Hildeby and AA are complete unknowns at the NHL level. The Leafs could build a quality roster, but their goaltending group is volatile enough to completely sink their season.
Long story short, the interest in Bobrovsky doesn’t really surprise me.
Bobrovsky has played at least 50 games in nine of the past 10 seasons, with the one season he didn’t being the COVID year. Yes, he’s turning 38 this year, and yes, he wasn’t good last season on an injured and mediocre Panthers team. But he’s a fair bet to still play a proper starter’s workload, and when your alternative options are an injury-prone 32-year-old goalie who has played over 30 NHL games in a season once in his entire career and two complete mystery boxes, interest in Bobrovsky is fairly justified.
While it is tempting to say, “Just play with the kids,” it is rooted in shiny-new-toy syndrome rather than in practicality for a team trying to contend.
Some eight years ago, the Leafs went with an upstart Garrett Sparks, who also won an AHL championship with the Marlies and had significantly better numbers during back-to-back regular seasons than either Hildeby or Akhtyamov. Sparks did that after a rough 17-game showing with the Leafs, so you can argue Hildeby has shown much better in the NHL — that is true — but the point still stands.
Just last AHL season, Arturs Silovs was excellent on the Abbotsford Canucks’ championship run, but this season he gave the Penguins .888 save percentage goaltending. That’s not nearly good enough. Goaltending is fickle, and leaving it to the inexperienced in this market in particular, behind what generally looks like a playoff team otherwise, has the potential to really blow up on the Leafs.
The idea of Bobrovsky at this point is eerily similar to when the Leafs signed Eddie Belfour. He was 37 when they signed him and coming off one of the worst seasons of his career with a .895 save percentage, dipping below the .900 mark for the second time in his career (the other was his second full season, nine seasons earlier). Of course, Belfour was excellent in his first two seasons in Toronto before the lockout negatively impacted the final years of his career.
The link is Mats Sundin, who is now helping the Leafs make decisions. When that lockout lifted, some may remember there were reports Sundin really wanted Teemu Selänne to play on his line, but he never spoke up to management, nor did the Leafs pursue it. Selänne had a late-career revival and won the Cup in 2008, leading the Ducks in scoring that season.
I’m not tying any potential move to Sundin exclusively (and let’s not have a repeat of the “Is it a Lou or Dubas move?” nonsense again), but I imagine a Hall of Famer like Sundin, who lived through a number of other aging Hall of Famers coming to Toronto and generally playing well—or, in Belfour’s case, exceptionally well—would look at a future Hall of Famer in Bob and bet on his pedigree and durability.
You can understand components of it—durability and pedigree against an unproven trio with workload concerns. But even if you could excuse his play and chalk it up to a bad year on a bad team, the contract speculation is terrifying.
A Florida reporter recently suggested Bobrovsky wanted to be the highest-paid goalie in the league and make as much as $14 million per year over a three-year deal. Sportsnet has reported he was seeking a six-year extension worth $42 million. The 3x$14M contract would also take him to $42 million. Those numbers are non-starters.
On a two-year term, you could stomach paying him a reasonable amount relative to his peers. Some recent contracts include Lukas Dostal’s $6.5 million-per-year deal, Jacob Markstrom’s two-year extension worth $6 million AAV, and Filip Gustavsson’s $6.8 million AAV. You can argue all or most of those goalies are better and younger at this point, but Bob is walking into the Hall of Fame, and I’m guessing he sees himself as more valuable than those players despite his age. If he were easy to sign, Florida would have done it already; they want to keep him.
We will see where it goes with Bob and whether anyone can reach a deal that makes sense. Or does he simply get overpaid in salary, term, or both?
Notes
Attention is close to turning to the trade market at large for the Leafs, especially at center. We won’t be able to work through a bunch of trade options the way we did with the UFAs, and it’s always hard to sort through the full extent of who is even available, but here are a few I have my eye on:
– Jack Drury might not have the upside, but he is a bona fide center who is very good at a number of things. He is one of the best faceoff men in the league at over 57 percent and spearheaded the top unit of the top-ranked penalty-killing unit in the NHL last season. He’s 26 and has only topped out at 27 points, but I think he is a bit more skilled than the points indicate and has been buried on very good Carolina and Colorado teams. Colorado needs to fill two forward spots and two defense spots, and they have under $7 million in cap space. Colorado has reportedly tried to sign Drury a few times—because he’s good and they like him—but he wants over $3 million, and they have other roster needs. He’s a prime-aged, quality center who can give them good defensive minutes.
– Mavrik Bourque is another interesting option. The Dallas Stars are similarly capped out and don’t even have enough space to sign Jason Robertson. If that squeezes Bourque out, he is very much worth pursuing. He would be a welcome right-shot center, and he just enjoyed a mini-breakout with 20 goals and 41 points. At just 24, he’d continue adding youth to this group and, unlike Drury, you can attempt to run him in the top six. Perhaps a better way to describe it: you can spread out the offense between him and Tavares in the middle six.
Bourque has some speed to his game, so it would be interesting to see him alongside William Nylander, whom I don’t think needs much besides him in the first place. If there’s any world where the Stars are enamored with uniting the Robertson brothers and keeping their star happy, it is an easy discussion (on top of draft capital).
– Barrett Hayton has obvious connections, given that John Chayka reached for him in the 2018 draft first place. It hasn’t gone according to plan so far, but he has had a few good seasons. Utah already has 11 forwards signed, and Caleb Desnoyers is coming sooner rather than later. If they are willing to cut bait, there’s a clear tie and need for the Leafs.
Hayton has managed a few effective and productive top-six seasons; again, can he function beside Nylander — who, again, really doesn’t need a whole lot — and allow the Leafs to push Tavares down on a line with, say, Gavin McKenna as he gets his feet wet early on?
– Jesperi Kotkaniemi is another player worth monitoring. His current deal is too rich and has too much term to take on. If the Hurricanes buy him out — they have a window to do it, as he’s young enough that it would be a one-third buyout — it becomes a more interesting reclamation project. He’s a lanky 6-foot-3 center who has had a number of good defensive and play-driving seasons, and at 25, the Leafs are not really in a position to say no to gambles on centermen. His father is also a scout for the Leafs.
– If there’s one defenseman I am monitoring right now, it is Olen Zellweger. Yes, he’s small, but regular readers will know that a few years ago I was high on Alex Carrier before Nashville re-signed him. The Predators then flipped him to Montreal after they got off to a poor start, and you can pretty well time Montreal’s turnaround to that trade. They were fifth last in points percentage before Carrier made his debut. Since then, they’ve recorded the fourth-best points percentage in the league.
The year after, we flagged Jordan Spence, who went to Ottawa for a third and a sixth, played just under 19 minutes per game, won those minutes handily, and chipped in seven goals and 31 points.
Zellweger is the guy this year. There is plenty of focus on Pavel Mintyukov because he told Anaheim to play him or move him, but after that… they played him. From Christmas onward, Mintyukov averaged 20:07 per game. That came at the expense of Zellweger, who averaged just 16:04 per game for the second half of the season. In the playoffs, he was healthy scratched for all but three games, but he was excellent in those games.
I understand the Leafs just traded for Emil Andrae, and you don’t want to ice a collection of small defensemen, but I’m that high on Zellweger. I think he’s a really good player. He’s a very good skater who plays like a modern defenseman—he walks the line well, he’s incredibly active, he has back-to-back seven-goal seasons, he’s turning 23 in September, and he’s a feisty battler for his size. I wouldn’t love having both him and Andrae, but I think Zellweger is good enough to overlook it and see how things look after a year. Anaheim has committed to LaCombe on the left, has Mintyukov, and has another first-round pick in Stian Solberg in the minors.
