Insider reveals why the Leafs brought back Lyubushkin, confirms that there's another move on the way
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The Toronto Maple Leafs came away from their game with the Arizona Coyotes with a much-needed two points, thanks to a 4-2 victory on home ice, but that wasn't the only good news coming out of last night. They also pulled off their first pre-deadline deal, landing Anaheim Ducks defenseman and former Leaf Ilya Lyubushkin.
Leading up to last night's trade, the Leafs were believed to have been in talks with Ducks GM Pat Verbeek on Lyubushkin already, but Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman revealed something very interesting about the deal, which is that it may not have happened last night, were it not for the freak injury to Mark Giordano.
The Leafs have had some terrible injury luck this season, and for Giordano, the oldest player in the league, the tumble that he took was not something you see too often and given the fact that they're already missing the likes of Timothy Liljegren, John Klingberg and Conor Timmins, losing Giordano absolutely "exacerbated things", according to Friedman. Not only that, but Friedman also believes the Leafs have more moves coming.
"Yeah, they were talking [TOR/ANA], but all of a sudden it intensified. Giordano gets hurt, and first of all, you want to wish the best for Mark Giordano. That was a really heavy collision into the boards... While [the trade] wasn't directly as a result of the injury, there's no question that that exacerbated things. They were looking for a right-hand shot anyway, they know Lyubushkin... They were looking at a lot of right-shot D... One of the guys I've wondered for Toronto, if it would make any sense for them, is a guy like Mario Ferraro, just because he's a guy San Jose's looked to move and he's a local guy, but he's a left-hand shot and they've got a lot of left hand shots. As I was kind of looking around, that was another name that kind of stood out to me... They do have some room to do some other things."
Not only is Friedman of the mindset that Ferraro would be a good fit in Toronto, but we already know that the Leafs and Coyotes have had talks regarding Matt Dumba, and that they've also kicked tires on Sean Walker in Philly and Noah Hanifin in Calgary - though Hanifin is more likely to move to a team in the States. These next several days are going to be very intriguing as we approach the March 8th trade deadline a week from today.
| POLL | ||
MARS 1 | 868 ANSWERS Insider reveals why the Leafs brought back Lyubushkin, confirms that there's another move on the way How many more moves do you think the Leafs make before March 8th? | ||
| Just one more move | 309 | 35.6 % |
| Two more moves, 1 F and 1 D | 500 | 57.6 % |
| 3 or more moves | 59 | 6.8 % |
| List of polls | ||
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