Team: 2023-24 Toronto Maple Leafs

Initial Creation Date: Jun. 14, 2023

Published: Jun. 14, 2023

Salary Cap Mode: Basic

I want to preface this by saying that there’s no way to know the outcome of essentially an alternate reality. In tandem, the Kessel and Rask trades for Toronto didn’t really go so well. The two trades occurred within just a couple years of each other. While they were to the detriment of the Leafs, it paved the way for Boston’s success in the early 2010’s.

So to start this off, these are the two trades, just to jog the memory a bit.

On June 24, 2006
Toronto Acquires: Andrew Raycroft
Boston Acquires: Tuukka Rask

On September 18, 2009
Toronto Acquires: Phil Kessel
Boston Acquires: 2010 1st round pick (#2-Tyler Seguin), 2010 2nd round pick (#32-Jared Knight), 2011 1st round pick (#9-Dougie Hamilton)

At face value in the moment of these trades, the Kessel trade is more egregious. Raycroft was seen as the better goalie, but a matter of time proved quite the opposite. The picks that Toronto gave up for Kessel was just an atrocity.

The starting roster for the 07-08 season would have looked something like this:

Blake – Sundin – Antropov
Steen – Stajan – Tlusty
Ponikarovsky – Wellwood
Tucker – Moore – Belak

Kaberle – Kubina
McCabe – Stralman
Coliacovo – White

Toskala
Raycroft

The starting roster for the 09-10 season would have looked something like this:

Ponikarovsky – Grabovski – Kessel
Kulemin – Stajan – Stempniak
Hagman – Bozak – Mayers
Stalberg – Blake – Orr

Kaberle - Komisarek
Phaneuf - White
Beauchemin - Schenn

Gustavsson
Toskala

I will put a bit of an asterisk on these rosters, because I couldn’t find the actual depth charts indicating exactly where each player was in the lineup, so I had to improvise, and that warranted what is likely not the correct lineup. These rosters are just to give a general idea of what state the Leafs were in back then just after acquiring Raycroft and Kessel.

The question I want to answer with this post is “How different would the Leafs have been if they hadn’t traded Rask and traded for Kessel?”

The roster below depicts the 2010-11 starting roster had Toronto kept the assets they had, happen to draft the same way Boston did and see them reach the same potential. There are too many “if” statements in there to know for certain what kind of impact Seguin, Rask and Hamilton would have had on the Leafs. Whether they’d be a better team is impossible to decisively know. Who knows if the group of players shown below would amount to anything? It’s easy to say that the Leafs got Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, Morgan Rielly and William Nylander because they failed and failed and failed for a painful amount of time, but it could just as easily be a trade or two that shifts the entire narrative. If Seguin, Rask and Hamilton were long-time Leafs, I would definitely expect that the Leafs would be a much different team than they currently are, but we’ll never know what that would really look like in its truest form. It is interesting to think about, and as much as there isn't a science to this, it allows us to think "what if?" for a moment.

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