Toronto Maple Leafs: Reactions to Erik Karlsson Rumours are Laughable
The Toronto Maple Leafs didn’t end up getting Erik Karlsson, but they wanted him.
After acquiring the reining Norris Trophy Winning, 101 point-scoring, 5v5 point leading, Erik Karlsson over the weekend, ex Toronto Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas said that attempting to acquire one of the NHL’s best defenseman went back to last year with the Leafs.
This isn’t exactly breaking news, as the rumours at the Trade Deadline were that Dubas was no longer in full control, and the decidedly non-Dubas-Like acquisitions seemed to confirm it.
And if you were in any doubt, the Leafs fired him after the season ended with Shanahan offering up a lot of nonsense about not thinking Dubas wanted to be the GM to justify the move.
So the Leafs changed philosophies. It wasn’t smart, but the majority of fans – or the really loud ones anyways, seem fine with that. I get it – it’s hard to convince people you’re on the right path when all you have to prove it are math and common sense.
That might seem like a lot, but it’s nothing when compared to results. The results were bad, so people moved on. It was a miracle a huge corporation like TMLSE ever went along with a rookie GM with (what will eventually prove to be) revolutionary ideas in the first place.
But even knowing that, the takes about Karlsson and the Leafs are ridiculous. It’s hard to believe that people wouldn’t want a 101 point scoring player, but that’s where we’re at, intellectually, in the NHL right now.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Reactions to Erik Karlsson Rumours are Laughable
No offence, but if you didn’t want the Leafs to get Karlsson you were wrong.
They 100% should have traded for him, as given the ages of Rielly and Tavares, the inability to predict goalies, and the fact that Marner, Matthews and Nylander are in their primes right now, all combine to make the risk vs reward easily in their favour.
Winning is hard, even if you have a top team it’s almost impossible. There was less than a 1% of 1% chance that the Leafs would lose 11 straight elimination games. The odds of it happening were so long they resemble being struck by lightning and wining the lottery at the exact same time (not literally, but hopefully you get my point).
The math on the Leafs lack of success over the last five years, plus the timing of the contracts they signed with Covid, should honestly give everyone in the organization a free pass from criticism, but I know that isn’t how things work.
The point, however, isn’t to change your mind about criticizing losses, but rather to point out that even when you have a great team, you will still likely not win the Cup.
And, since you are likely to lose anyways, it makes sense to take risks. The conservative, risk-adverse nature of most fans and of the NHL, and managers in the NHL doesn’t make any sense, since playing it safe only makes it more likely that your window will pass you by.
Teams should be taking way more crazy risks, especially when they do things that accumulate into major risks with almost no reward (example: paying Ryan Reaves, John Klingberg, David Kampf and Max Domi a combined salary that could get you a second Mitch Marner, but all four of them figure to be replacement players).
Erik Karlsson wouldn’t be much of a risk because the cost to acquire him was low and he can always be put on the LTIR if he can’t play. What risk there is is worthwhile because he’s a player so good that it’s almost impossible to acquire one. (For context, the Leafs are a franchise that is over 100 years old and he’d instantly be their best ever defenseman).
Elite players like him tend to age nicely, and given the marginal difference between teams, anyone who got him would become Cup Favorites.
Everyone against this move mentions two things: the salary Karlsson makes, and style of play that he employs, so let me say really quickly why these are bad objections.
- The Salary doesn’t matter. Elite players in the NHL have such outsized impacts compared to everyone else that it is always a good move to get a $10 million dollar player. If you add any superstar player and replace mid-range players in your lineup with AHL league-minimum cap-hits, you will always come out ahead. Always. The math works every single time, and the LTIR pretty much takes away all the risk.
2. People constantly talk about how Karlsson is bad at defense. This is a huge myth. The game of hockey cannot be split into two separate spheres, no matter how convenient it is to do so. At the end of the season, every single player is the sum of his results and it doesn’t matter how you got there.
Erik Karlsson does it in a unique way, but the end results are that his team is roughly the best team in the NHL whenever he’s on the ice. It is irrelevant if he is bad at defense because when he is on the ice the puck is mostly in the other zone, 150 to 200 feet away from his own net.
The Toronto Maple Leafs should have tried harder to acquire the best player available, and they will most likely end up regretting that they didn’t. Sure, there are four years left on the contract and that isn’t ideal, but you only need to win once in those four years to achieve legendary status.
The Toronto Maple Leafs made a mistake when they fired Dubas, and they made a worse one when they let their old GM take the work he did for them to his new team and acquire – by far – the best player that any team picked up this summer.
