The Brandon Carlo era has come to an unceremonious end as the Maple Leafs have sent him to the St. Louis Blues in exchange for two third-round draft picks in 2026.
It is significantly less than what the Leafs paid for him just 1.5 seasons earlier: Fraser Minten, a top-five-protected first-round pick, and a fourth-round pick.
The Blues are coached by Jim Montgomery, who had Carlo in Boston, so that connection is easy to make.
From the Leafs‘ end, it is a disappointing sell-low, and it’s not unreasonable to think the Leafs could have used Carlo this season. Darren Raddysh has not been much of a penalty killer for Tampa Bay, and the Leafs‘ best penalty killing right-shot defenseman, Chris Tanev, is turning 37 in December and played just 11 games last season. If nothing else, Carlo was a legitimately good penalty killer.
Carlo represented some level of insurance if/when Tanev misses time because they don’t really have anyone else that fits the bill on the right side. After Raddysh and Tanev, the next right shot on the depth chart is either William Villeneuve or Ben Danford.
This wasn’t exactly a return that was too good to pass up.
With Craig Berube fired and now defense coach Mike Van Ryn gone too, it would have been nice to see Carlo in a new system before punting him away. His old coach is apparently all too happy to have him again. In theory, they could have if nothing else had helped get his game back in order and then traded him rather than selling him at the absolute low point.
Even when Carlo did play well at times in a shutdown role alongside Jake McCabe, the previous coaching staff would inexplicably split them up and revert to pairings that didn’t work. He could never really gain momentum in Toronto, and part of that included a foot injury that led to surgery and the overall team falling apart around him last season, which is always going to make a defensive defenseman look worse than he is.
On the glass-half-full side, for a Leafs team that is clearly trying to compete right now, they are doing a good job of insulating themselves and hedging with draft picks. If they don’t trade any of their picks, they will draft nine times in this class, which obviously includes the first overall pick. As much has been made of them not having their first-round draft pick for the next two drafts, they already have a first-round pick next year, as well as eight other draft picks, including two second-round draft picks.
In that sense, they are giving themselves a lot of lottery tickets to keep trying to add young talent to the organizational pipeline. It is a fine line to balance, but they are reasonably toeing that line.
As things stand with the Leafs’ defense right now, it is certainly mobile, but there are legitimate questions about how well they can actually defend. I’d align the pairings along these lines:
McCabe – Raddysh
Rielly – Tanev
Andrae – OEL
Villeneuve
With a healthy Tanev, it has the potential to be a reasonably solid unit, but without him, — just like last year — some major questions start appearing. Carlo could have helped hedge some of those questions, and it would have been nice to see him in a new system. But it was a failed swing, and sometimes, you just want to cut bait from that altogether, especially with a new regime coming in.
Considering free agency opens next week, the Leafs can also continue adding to and/or shifting around this unit. There is still plenty of time. But mobility and puck movement are clearly the priorities here; it was already obvious when they traded for Andrae and Raddysh, and now they have moved their only defenseman who is completely limited with the puck. For a team that couldn’t break out cleanly last season, it is a good start toward fixing that issue.
