Quoting: Chapee44
Very fair assessment here. My rationale is Thompson could very well be a 2RW as early as next year with the right linemate or in the near future. Should be a 3RW next year fairly certainly. Borgen is at what might be his ceiling which is a bottom pairing shutdown RHD but in our organization he evidently plays top pairing in the AHL. He could be a Top4 but I think that's a BIIIG stretch. Either way a nice depth option. I fully support your "big fish" desire! His solid season this year is the only reason I want him at all. I was very against him and his brother this time last year.
I like the Thompson assessment for the Sabres, although the Sabres may not have the best RW depth, so Thompson would likely be forced to play behind Marner/Kappy/Potentially one of Johnsson/Kerfoot/Mikheyev depending on how lines are shuffled.
The Leafs already have enough bottom pair defenseman atm (Holl/Liljegren/Marincin/Lehtonen), so I'm not sure how Borgen would slot in (other than a 7th guy).
From my very basic knowledge of advanced stats (Corsi, Fenwick), Montour seems like a #4-5 guy with the Sabres (20 minutes/night, looked like he also played a lot with Dahlin). His Corsi/Fenwick, suggest he was in the D Zone a lot (I also know the Sabres are a bad team, so its not his fault), but the oiSV% (On ice save percentage, while Montour was on the ice, was at 0.920, which is pretty good considering the swiss cheese Hutton and Ullmark were this year)
Maybe if the deal was Cozens + Montour, it would be a little more interesting to the Leafs (since Cozens could be a piece with extremely high potential). But Nylander is 24, with 3 60 point seasons, so losing that skill would be pretty detrimental to the Leafs without getting a high end piece back.