After an entire day of waiting, Leaf fans saw Brad Treliving make a trade moments before the 3:00pm ET deadline rolled around. As the deadline approached, the Leafs finally pulled the trigger and acquired Connor Dewar from the Minnesota Wild.
Dewar is in his third NHL season and can play left wing or center, which gives Sheldon Keefe another option when shuffling his lines. In 57 games for the Wild this season, he has 10 goals and 14 points but has 94 hits.
Dewar was a Leafs development camp invitee back in 2017 but ended up being drafted by the Wild in the third round of the 2018 draft. The 24-year-old will be an RFA at the end of the season, meaning that the Leafs will retain his rights beyond this year, though Dewar does have arbitration rights.
As far as where he fits in with the Leafs, Dewar is a quality penalty killer, so while he may not play much at 5v5, he'll likely see plenty of use on the penalty kill, where the Leafs really needed some help. Whether he plays on the 3rd line or the 4th line remains to be seen, but at this point, Dewar seems to be much more of a PK specialist for the Leafs than anything else.
