The Toronto Maple Leafs acquired Ilya Lyubushkin on Thursday evening, at 75% retention. They sent a 3rd round pick to the Anaheim Ducks in exchange, as well as a 6th round pick to the Hurricanes to help with the cap retention.
As with other recent trades, I’m not going to assign grades for this trade. I’ll try to keep the focus on the larger teambuilding picture rather than putting the blinders on and focusing too narrowly on this trade. I recently shared some thoughts on team building strategies in a series of posts, and we’ll consider how the move fits with these strategies.
- Perpetual Mediocrity: ‘Just Get In’
- Designed to Fail: The Rebuild
- A Better Way: Regenerative Cohorts
The Trade
Toronto Maple Leafs Acquire:
- Ilya Lyubushkin (75% retained)
- Kirill Slepets
Anaheim Ducks Acquire:
- 2025 3rd Round Pick (TOR)
Carolina Hurricanes Acquire:
2024 6th Round Pick (TOR)
The Pieces
Ilya Lyubushkin
Lyubushkin is a 29 year old defenseman, in the final year of a 2 year deal with a $2.75MM cap hit. He’s a defense first defenseman, who’s struggled to tread water even in limited minutes with the Ducks this season. The Leafs acquire him at less than the league minimum salary after the double retention.
Prospects and Draft Picks
The Ducks receive the Toronto’s 2025 third round pick.
The Hurricanes receive the Maple Leafs’ 2024 6th round pick.
The Leafs also acquired 24 year old Kirill Slepets in the deal, who has 19 points in 53 games for Khabarovsk Amur of the KHL this season.
The Outlook
Toronto Maple Leafs
The Maple Leafs are once again looking comfortable to make the playoffs, however they’ve seemed less dominant this regular season than they have the past few. Their roster is top heavy at forward and has some questionable pieces on the backend for a contender, so deadline upgrades are not a surprise. The fact that they targeted a defenseman who looks sub-replacement level as an upgrade, is a bit of a surprise. I can’t easily see who the Leafs think he’ll slot in for in the top 6 (or even top 8 for that matter). So is it even an upgrade?
I harp about depth for the playoffs often, but this isn’t it. Lyubushkin doesn’t give the Leafs another player that can slot in their top 4 and expect to win minutes against the top teams in the league, which is who they will face in the postseason. It’s pretty questionable if he’ll even be able to hold his own on the bottom pair.
The move cost Toronto a 3rd and a 6th, which isn’t huge. But when your draft pick pool is already depleted, it starts to look a little bigger. The Leafs need to win now, because the future is looking pretty dicey.
Anaheim Ducks
The Ducks have fallen out of the playoff race in the West and it makes plenty of sense for them to continue to accumulate future assets for their rebuild in a season that looks lost from a playoffs perspective. When you can add those future assets by trading a sub-replacement player, that’s even better.
Lyubushkin looks like a below replacement level player in the model and shipping him out of Anaheim will open up more minutes for the Ducks young defensemen this season. Pavel Mintyukov and Olen Zellweger are the future in Anaheim and they should see more opportunity down the stretch. Not to mention, the Ducks added a 3rd round pick and pushed their upcoming draft success probability in a good direction.
Carolina Hurricanes
The Hurricanes never seem to turn down an opportunity where they can add value. They are still projected to have around $5.8MM of deadline cap space according to CapFriendly, so the $687k retention to add a lottery pick shouldn’t stop them from making a deadline acquisition or two if they want to.
