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The Toronto Maple Leafs finish off the Western Canada leg of their five-game road trip against the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday, after an uneventful NHL Trade Deadline day, in which GM Kyle Dubas made one minor deal sending winger Dryden Hunt to Calgary for minor league center Radim Zohorna. The Leafs accomplished most of their deadline work late last month with the addition of centers Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari, and earlier this week adding defensemen Jake McCabe, Luke Schenn and Erik Gustafsson, along with winger Sam Lafferty.
“We made a number of different transactions over the course of the last several weeks that we feel set our team up competitively and give us the depth we need at all positions to compete come playoff time.” Dubas said on Friday. “We feel good about where we are at right now. Like everybody, when you make a trade in the season, especially when you only have less than a quarter of it or about a quarter of it to go, you worry about the players coming in and integrating into the group. So far, it has been good.”
One area that Toronto did not address was in goal, where Ilya Samsonov has exceeded expectations, Matt Murray has played well when healthy, and Joseph Woll and Erik Kallgren have filled in admirably when needed.
“I am very confident in our goaltenders.” Dubas said, “When looking at it, the question is: How confident are you that they can do it in the end and pull through? Matt has done it in the past. There weren’t really guys available who have. We believe in the potential of Ilya and Joe both. We will get Matt healthy, get him rolling, and let the three of them continue to move it in the right direction.”
Dubas accomplished his goal of filling holes and adding depth with minimal impact to the existing roster. Toronto only subtracted two everyday players prior to the deadline in Pierre Engvall and Rasmus Sandin and added three forwards and three blueliners. According to Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman on the 32 Thoughts podcast, one of the Leafs goals was to keep versatile forward Alex Kerfoot in the fold and the move to have Minnesota retain 25% of O’Reilly’s contract was specifically targeted at clear space to retain Kerfoot.
The Engvall trade cleared his $2.25 million cap hit in exchange for a 2024 third-round pick and moving Sandin cleared $1.4 million from next year’s cap, while also re-acquiring some draft capital in the form of Boston’s 2023 first-rounder.
Murray is expected to make his first start in six weeks against the Canucks. His last outing was on January 17th vs. Florida, allowing four goals on eight shots before being pulled early in the second period, but the two-time Cup winner still has put up excellent numbers in 19 starts (11-5-2, 2.73 GAA, .911 save %).
With nine blueliners, Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe has a number of different options and could go with seven defensemen, as he did in the 2-1 win over Calgary on Thursday. Dubas indicated on Friday at Conor Timmins will continue to get mixed into the lineup while at the same time ramping up his conditioning after missing time over the last three seasons due to injury.
It is also possible that Keefe will give 39-year-old Mark Giordano a game off here or there before the playoffs for load management purposes.
Toronto Maple Leafs Blogger • 
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