Gustafsson is a top-15 point-producing defenseman in the league this season and is a power-play specialist, albeit he is limited to secondary man-advantage minutes in Toronto due to Morgan Rielly’s presence on the top unit. When you’re younger, you think you have all the time in the world, you don’t realize how fast time goes.”Īs their main addition to the blue line, the Leafs ended up acquiring a much different type of defenseman than Karlsson in Jake McCabe, but they did also add pending UFA Erik Gustafsson from Washington. I’ve been around the game long enough to understand what needs to be done from an organizational perspective, and it just sucks that it happened to be where I’m at in this stage of my career. Based on the quotes coming out of Karlsson after the Timo Meier deal, he doesn’t sound like a player who is content to stay put in San Jose through a rebuild at this stage in his career.Įrik Karlsson: “When you trade a guy like Timo, I don’t think that shows that this is going to be a quick turnaround. In San Jose, Erik Karlsson is enjoying a career resurgence with a Norris Trophy-calibre season with 80 points in 63 games, but he didn’t end up moving due to the complex nature of moving an $11.5 million AAV contract midseason. Signed for a $6.25 million AAV, the 32-year-old Ekholm ended up moving to Edmonton in a trade with only $250k in cap retention for the next three years, which would’ve been a tough deal to make work for the Leafs under their cap constraints (and willing third-party brokers for double retentions become much more difficult to find and are more expensive to incentivize on longer-term deals). Nashville only retained 4% on Ekholm and San Jose wasn't willing to retain enough to allow contending teams to seriously consider acquiring him. HNIC 32: EDM Meier+MacEwen/TOR Ekholm+Karlsson/Ritchie trade/SJ+Greenway/Flyers/Memorial Cup presentations/Mike Stothers' important message - įriedman at the intermission says Leafs looked at both Mattias Ekholm and Erik Karlsson, but the math didn't work. On HNIC, Elliotte Friedman provided a few nuggets on deals that were discussed but didn’t come to fruition at the 2023 trade deadline, including reports of interest from the Maple Leafs in both Mattias Ekholm and Erik Karlsson.
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