Team: 2021-22 Toronto Maple Leafs

Initial Creation Date: Feb. 19, 2022

Published: Feb. 19, 2022

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

Excellent trade for the leafs value wise and need wise. Basically for nothing, they dump ritchie, get a decent bottom 4 defenceman in lyubushkin, and a decent bottom six player who’s good defensively and can score a bit in dzingel. I personally think this is all the leafs are gonna do. The only way they make another trade is if they move another player, for cap reasons of course. Ideally, you’d want another defenceman to completely shore up the blue line, so if you trade away holl, you hopefully get someone much better in return. In that case another high pick would likely need to be involved. However, if you look at the market for any more defensive RD’s on selling teams, it’s pretty shallow, especially after this trade. For those reasons, I think they’re done, but who knows. Maybe another depth piece, doesn’t need to be a D, is on the way. Either way, I’m pretty happy with this trade. Hopefully he’s better than holl and plays well with Muzzin. His analytics are pretty good in his own end, and he was on the top pair in Arizona a lot this season with chychrun, so definitely something good to have on your resume. If he’s not the answer, they got time before the trade deadline to maybe acquire that big time RD.