Quoting: Affectionate_Side_64
He "looks a bit better than he is", as in one of the best defensive defensemen in the league last year despite, as you said, being one of the only RD on an awful Flyers team. Brodie has been better defensively yes, but he is on the decline and I believe the Leafs could unlock Risto's full potential, He was already better than Brodie last year, and bringing him into a more talented system with a more established structure should only improve that. He is also a better skater than Brodie, a better puck carrier, better offensively, much larger and more physical and obviously much younger.
A lot of what you're saying could just as easily have been applied to Schenn in the past, even more so. Risto just needs to clean up the mistakes in his game, just as Schenn did. He did exactly that last year, and there's no reason to think that can't continue to improve.
It cannot be applied to Schenn in the past, because Schenn has actually won two cups and 42 career playoff games experience, unlike risto's decade long NHL career and a whopping 0 playoff games to show for it.
Brodie is not on the decline, and just came off the best defensive season of his career. He's shown no signs of a decline and is in fact much better than Risto. Risto also isn't much better offensively, he scored 20 points in a top pairing role and his 5v5 offensive impact was in the negatives.
Brodie is exceptional at what he does in Keefe's system. Why would you bring in an overpaid DFD that looks a whole lot better than he actually is.
I honestly gotta agree with the other Toronto fans here. Nothing about this team is suited for the playoffs.
Risto stinks.
Josh Anderson plays like a bus with no driver and despite going on a cinderalla run one year with Montreal, is actually not at all a playoff performer.
You'd literally be better running it back with what Toronto actually has than overpaying for 3rd line/2nd pairing guys and saying "look, playoff guys!"