It would be reassuring to hear some positive feedback on Kerfoot from Avs fans. not one fan has stepped up and said we got a nice player with upside. Barrie on the other hand has had plenty of accolades. I guess Kerfoot was their Zaitsev.
Kerfoot clearly had a rough playoffs. That must be fresh in their minds.
He's just your average middle 6 forward with decent skill level. Not a guy that was depended on too much like Z and thus resented, just a guy who kinda was just average.
Teams need decent players on smaller manageable contracts too. Nothing wrong with him per se.
Barrie on the other hand has an elite skillset(offensively). totally different asset.
This trade is good for both teams, but getting Alexander Kerfoot isn't really part of what makes it a win for the Leafs.
He's not a bad player, he does enough on paper to justify the contract he got. He can be a third wheel in a top 6 role but only on the wing and he's generally more comfortable at center. He'll collect his fair share of points in a top 6 role and is a decent filler guy but you'll eventually find yourself feeling he should be fairly easy to upgrade upon.
Part of that is that he doesn't really bring a whole ton other than being pretty good offensively. He's not overly small but he feels small and brings no physicality outside of catching a guy off guard once a year. He's not terrible defensively but you also don't want him in a defensive role. He's just kind of vanilla. Most Avs fans are much easier on (and happy to pay similar money for) JT Compher who produces less than Kerfoot in a similar W/C role, but is moderately better defensively, and is a pest.
He's the guy that it seems like you should want to have, but after 3-4 months you start to feel like you should be striving for better. He's somewhere between being a Sam Gagner and a poor man's Jordan Eberle. He seems like a good fit as the 5th or 6th guy in the top 6 but at the same time you don't really want him there. He seems like he'd be a strong 3C option but really his strengths don't lend him well to that and his weaknesses are even more exposed in a bottom 6 role. Regardless of where he is in the lineup you can't help but feel like there is somebody better at that specific role - that brings extra elements to their game - that you could have there instead.
Besides being a bit of a whipping boy, I think he's mostly liked (especially with him shooting pucks into crests for you guys now) and Avs fans are generally hoping he does well and survives what the media has been turning into pretty high hopes for him. Unfortunately the Canadian media hype train is going full steam on him and Leafs fans will be disappointed if they're expecting what they've been hearing from the talking heads to be completely accurate. He might find a role and do well there, or he might end up on 3 different teams the next 5 years.
He's hard to fit into a lineup that you feel like can contend with. Given the moves this summer it seems like that's how Sakic felt, apparently Dubas disagrees. I think most Avs fans are just interested at this point to see how he turns out there. He seemed like the kind of guy that gets traded to Edmonton or Vancouver, not to a team that should be looking at their lineup and thinking they can be a contender
Barrie on the other hand gets more stick than he deserves. He's great at what he does and he does it often enough to forgive/forget the odd terrible decision or turnover (if you're the kind of fan that wants to never notice your dmen you'll hate him). He's a guy the Leafs should work hard to keep beyond next year and I think if they do then the trade is almost perfectly even value, if he walks in UFA it feels like the Leafs paid a heavy price for one year of Barrie.
