Everyone’s been dreaming of trading Jakob Chychrun to the Leafs lately. It comes as news that Jake Muzzin is on LTIR, meaning he can’t play for at least 24 days, but also that Timothy Liljegren and Jordie Benn are healthy enough to make conditional AHL loans for a while. A few days. However, this last element does not guarantee an immediate return to action at the NHL level.
In the meantime, while the Leafs are in California, Filip Král has been recalled. That gives the team seven defenders, 14 healthy forwards (Kyle Clifford is also on IR now), and two goaltenders.
Does adding Chychrun at this time make sense?
The price
Nick Kypreos, writing in the Star, thinks Arizona won’t require Matt Knies, but will graciously take one of Rasmus Sandin, Timothy Liljegren or Topi Niemelä with at least one first-round pick, possibly two. He admits the Leafs shouldn’t be trading right-shooting defensemen. He also worked in a trade of Kerfoot, like everyone else.
Michael Traikos typed something that I won’t read, but Hockey News did:
Meanwhile, Postmedia’s Michael Traikos has offered the Leafs to offer Robertson and a 2023 first-round pick as well as Kerfoot if Muzzin isn’t out for the season. He recognized Robertson’s potential as a top-six forward, but felt the Leafs are already well-stocked in those positions when their defense is a more pressing need.
The player
There’s a kind of elegant efficiency to acquiring a defender who arrives pre-wounded. It saves so much time, and it would fit right in. Here is Kypreos on the rise of Chychrun:
Chychrun doesn’t come without its flaws – its injury history for one. Her body has been through a lot in recent years – surgeries on both knees, shoulder and, most recently, her wrist and ankle. But he is only 24 years old and youth is on his side. His sense of the game has also been questioned.
Okay, to be fair, Kypreos mentions that Chychrun plays a lot and scores on the power play.
Chychrun is entering his seventh season with the Coyotes, and the most games he played was 68 in his first year. He’s spent his career at bad teams, playing more and more minutes as defenders with huge salaries above him on the depth chart have been traded, but he’s yet to play a game this year.
He’s a left-sided defender, and his fame has always been goals, not points. Kypreos compares it to Rielly, apparently based on recent use of Chychrun in Arizona. Their comparison over the past seven years reveals this:
- Rielly played 2,700 more minutes and 88 more games
- Rielly has a point rate of 1.76 to Chychrun’s 1.21
- Their expected individual targets by 60 are 0.36 and 0.3, but the targets for 60 are 0.45 and 0.31 (Chychrun / Rielly)
- Chychrun shoots the puck at 14 of 60, Rielly at 13.
- Chychrun shoots slightly above his expected shooting percentage, Rielly just above it.
This means that to match Rielly’s point production, Chychrun has to play as much, and you have to believe that his low assist rate is due to bad teammates, and that he would increase on a better team. Most of his fame as a top player rests on his slight shooting abilities – not the most common skill in a defender, to be fair.
In their final three seasons, from 2018-2021, Rielly is exactly what we know he is in many ways – extremely good at generating offense, good at hit-sharing and pretty bad at defending. Its extremes are its trademark. Chychrun is a more bland player, less capable offensively, with average to good defense.
Just to remind everyone – including Kypreos, it seems – Rielly isn’t going anywhere. And the player a Chychrun trade replaces is Jake Muzzin now and potentially Rasmus Sandin in the future. His marginally good showing on a terrible team at 24 (the NHL’s peak performance age) isn’t the kind of performance you want to see from someone you consider your number two or three defenseman.
They’re both called Jake, that’s the biggest similarity.
The contract
Chychrun is under contract for three more years at $4.6 million a year. He has a modified no-trade in his next two years (the reason Arizona is in a rush to trade him this season), which adds a 10-team no-trade slate.
His contract is lower than Muzzin’s in real dollars and % of the cap at the time of his signing, but not by much.
Does that make sense?
No of course not. The Leafs need another questionable left fielder with a reputation bigger than his abilities, just like they need another defenseman on IR.
Any team trading for Chychrun now, when Arizona can request two first-round picks or top prospects who haven’t had multiple knee surgeries, is taking a gamble. Game teams have to have a lot of things to play with, so they don’t value them as much, nor can they be in a position of real need for the player.
The Leafs were players like this. They used to take risks and add contracts and it was fun and exciting and the stakes were nothing more than the risk of some guy typing something in the Toronto Sun that was negative about of your choice – afterthought, when it’s easy to be condescendingly smarter than that GM in the glasses.
The Leafs are now putting dollars in the slot machine in the corner near the trash can door. They take their Michael Buntings and their David Kämpfs and they go home happy to have something that could work. They don’t pour all their money on the roulette table and bet on “could actually play a full season one day”.
Ottawa appears to be out of the running for Arizona, and Los Angeles was mentioned as a likely team because they tick those boxes on a lot of assets and their willingness to bet on the non-working player.
At some point once people notice that Chychrun’s uncle is Chicago’s head coach we’ll see the idea that Chicago will trade for him now and then when he’s proven himself turn him into a contender . But Arizona has no reason to trade him now. That’s the part of it that makes it nonsense. They don’t have to worry about Chychrun’s trade demand, they’re in it together – he’s in games, they’re playing him huge minutes and with every power play he looks good like the obvious best player on the team, and they both went away happy in March.
And that still won’t make sense for the Leafs.
You know what makes sense right now, given that Muzzin could be out long-term and Liljegren is set to return? Ethan Bear. But that’s a story for another day.
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