Confirmed deal : Toronto Maple Leafs Timothy Liljegren Trade Grade: Abomination Toronto Maple Leafs Timothy Liljegren Trade Grade: Abomination

 

There is a reason the Toronto Maple Leafs were recently named one of the most poorly run teams in the NHL by both NHL executives and fans (the Athletic).

That reason is that the Toronto Maple Leafs are a team with no semblance of a plan, one which seemingly makes moves indipendent of any type of long-term plan, intelligent thought process or critical thinking

The Leafs traded Timothy Liljegren, after sitting him out for nine of the season’s first ten games, to the San Jose Sharks for essentially nothing on. Technically, they got a third and a sixth round pick, as well as a useless roster player, but that is a terrible return for a 17th overal pick with 200 games of sucessful NHL minutes on his resume.

 

This horrendous display of management prowess would at least be excusable if the Leafs had a better player than Liljegren taking his place on the roster, but they don’t.

What happened is that the Leafs arbitrarily decided that only big defenseman have any value, and decided to stop playing Liljegren even though they had spent a first round pick, multiple years, millions of dollars and a ton of effort to develop him.

Liljegren isn’t a star, but he could still develop into one. He is only 25 and has 200 NHL games of experience where he uniformly wins his minutes. Occaisionally he could be a frustrating player because he doesn’t hit and doesn’t score, so a lot of the times you notice him it’s for negative reasons. That said, he always wins his minutes in the aggregate, and there is immense value in that, whether the Toronto Maple Leafs choose to recognize it or not