SeaOfBlue
The Passion That Unites Us All
- Aug 1, 2013
- 35,591
- 16,777
Anderson is far from a quality piece.
Hes an average prospect/young player who plays a simple but valuable game that is lacking in the leafs bottom 6. He will be a 25-40 point player hopefully for 2/3 seasons of his deal with good tenacity and puck retrieval skills
He wont be out producing or out valuing AJs contributions over the next 3 years of their respective deals.
The primary reasoning behind that trade was cap savings. Doubt we would have dealt AJ for Anderson if their had been no covid cap crunch and the cap was at 85M like projected.
Dubas hands were tied a bit but the deal was probably his weakest move of the offseason (which to be fair was very good for the most part). Getting him at 750k for 3 years though is a potentially great move if anderson becomes a regular in the bottom 6 moving forward
The way this trade boils down is that the Leafs took a risk on getting a more valuable player. I seriously did not expect a guy like Anderson to be in play for Johnsson, but we lucked out on a guy who was old regime and I guess was not a favourite in his old organization.
We are taking a risk on getting an NHL-ready player with Blake Coleman upside in exchange for a good secondary scorer who the Leafs did not really need with the emergence of Robertson (and potentially a few other prospects like Malgin and Korshkov) and the addition of guys like Mikheyev taking over Johnsson's top 6 role.
Cap does play into it but he does not make this trade without the kind of value that Anderson possesses coming the other way, and not without guys like Mikheyev, Robertson, Malgin, Korshkov, and of course Anderson ready to replace him in the immediate-to-short term.