Hockey In Paranoid Times

Leafs Wrap Weekend With Two Trades, Ten Picks

The all-gas, no brakes spring and summer for the Toronto Maple Leafs continued on Friday and Saturday, as the team completed the 2026 NHL Entry Draft while making two trades along the way. I’m sure you’ll find no shortage of in-depth analysis on everything that’s gone on across other platforms, but for the sake of organization and revisiting, some quick notes on the weekend.

Sam Ersson to Ottawa

If you remember from my post on the Philadelphia trade a week and a half ago, I wasn’t particularly high on the Ersson part of the trade package, largely seeing it as cap/roster balancing and having doubts that Toronto would give him a qualifying offer, only possibly keeping him if he took a minimum-ish offer that risked him sliding behind multiple other goalies in the depth chart.

Thankfully, another team came calling for the Leafs to remove any reason to ponder. The Ottawa Senators ponied up a fifth-round draft pick for next season to land Ersson’s rights on Friday morning. For me, getting anything at all here is a win, as goaltenders are historically have a soft market and Ersson’s results have been poor at the NHL level. Unless you’re an established elite goaltender or a very highly touted young up-and-comer, you are likely going to carry a trade value between a fourth liner and future considerations. A fifth is plenty.

It Was Always Going To Be Gavin McKenna

How sure was I that the Maple Leafs weren’t going to get cute last night? I didn’t even stay home for the draft. I went out to watch Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie at Christie Pits with my friends (great movie, by the way). We did watch a little bit of the first round on an iPad before the festivities started, but I knew there’d be no new discourse.

Gavin McKenna is the most talented player in this draft class. Sure, there are other excellent, well-rounded, future star-level players near the top of the group whom Toronto would be happy to have in other scenarios, and it’s possible that their resumes end up greater when all is said and done. But McKenna’s game-breaking vision, playmaking, and puckhandling are going to be second to few in this league, and he seems to be coming in saying all the right things, showing confidence and eagerness without spilling into cockiness. I know there are doubts due to the slow start he had at Penn State, but he was a freshman in an ever-evolving new environment and got the hang of it as he progressed. He also put up mega-elite major junior numbers in his Draft -1 year that would’ve been enough to keep him in this conversation even if he just repeated them this year.

When you pick at 1, any temptation to shift from the consensus top pick means that you have to be absolutely sure that the top guy is lacking something. I don’t see that here.

Brandon Carlo To The Wood Chipper (St. Louis)

One of the great mistakes in modern Leafs history can now be left behind as of Saturday, as the Maple Leafs moved defenceman Brandon Carlo to the St. Louis Blues for two third-round draft picks in this year’s draft.

Carlo, infamously, was acquired at the 2025 trade deadline from the Boston Bruins, for Fraser Minten and a first round draft pick. Until lucky number 12 shot up the lottery machine, that pick was very close to being this year’s sixth overall selection. Even without the benefit of hindsight of result or basic knowledge of the 2024/25 Leafs’ underlying numbers, giving up a young middle-six centre and a first rounder in any spot seemed like a lot for a 28-year-old defenceman with declining metrics and weaknesses that matched the rest of Toronto’s blue line.

In 88 games with the Leafs, Brandon Carlo never scored a goal and had 10 assists. The Leafs generally got outshot worse with him on the ice than with him off of it, and the right side remained a dead zone for puck movement.

None of this is on Carlo himself, who never cheated the team on effort. It’s on a war room that looked at size and reach as checkboxes in their effort to “look the part” of an imposing team, and got a player who was far from a needle-mover in return.

Two third round picks are a lot less than what the team paid for Carlo, but it’s a fine return. You can’t fall into Sunk Cost Fallacy. As I put it on Twitter, the Leafs ripped themselves off in the past by paying a toonie for a Timbit, but came out ahead today by re-selling it for fifty cents while it was still fresh enough to have interest.

Leafs Pick Eight on Day Two

Toronto’s second-day draft haul on Saturday consisted of:

I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I had a ton of pre-draft knowledge on this group. The draft was never my area of expertise when I was all-in on the public scene, and while I’ve spent the past few years more involved in local minor and junior hockey, Toronto made ten picks this weekend and two of those players came out of the OHL. Of those two, only one of them played minor hockey in Canada. In other words, Bilecki is the only player here I’ve seen live, and that was in a more passive fashion.

What I can do is take the same information you’re all reading and speak to the directional makeup, and in that sense, this draft seems fine. A lot of the prospect sharps seem to like their efforts (friend of the blog Steven Ellis of Daily Faceoff gave Toronto one of two A+’s on his day grades, Scott Wheeler of The Athletic has them as a winner on his, Cam Robinson of Elite Prospects tweeted his approval as well.) Most of their picks seem to “beat” consensus rankings and some of the more trustworthy rankings like EPs.

It doesn’t feel like Toronto made a ton of bets on falling upside, though I wonder a little if there was a mushier middle this year and fewer guys to really swing on by the time their pick pile started to come out to play. Leafs GM John Chayka spoke on filling out depth in beautiful corporate-speak fashion. The team seemed to ignore putting the puck in the net on Day 2, only taking one forward in their first six Saturday picks. When they did pick forwards, they went for work-rate types, and when they went for defencemen, they went for transition guys (thank heavens) with decent size. They took two goaltenders that played at levels outside of most people’s radars, and they took two over-age defenceman who could be pro options a little quicker.

Basically, it feels like a method that’s unlikely to add more gamebreaker’s to McKenna, but could do better-than-average at adding NHLers to the pipeline, which the organization does need right now.

What The Leafs Didn’t Do

What might be as interesting as what the Leafs did this weekend is what they didn’t do.

Matthew Knies, member of many trade rumours in the past few weeks and months, didn’t end up going anywhere, despite deep talks with teams like Chicago, Buffalo and Seattle. Morgan Rielly, who gave in a list of Western Conference teams he’d consider is still in blue and white.

Both of these can change. I wonder about Columbus with Knies now, given Zach Werenski’s potential to be on the trade block and reports that Toronto would be one of the teams he’d be interested in heading to. With Rielly, I’m sure the goal is to not pay to get rid of him. I imagine the Leafs are waiting out the market a bit to see which teams step up their offers when other defencemen are no longer in the mix. With that said, waiting longer also hurts their own flexibility to make moves.

There were quite a few players of stature moved in the last few days and my feelings on whether Toronto should’ve been involved in some of those deals are mixed. I like Mason McTavish, but I don’t two-firsts like him. Similar goes with Pavel Dorofeyev, especially with the extension he signed on Broadway after his deal.

On the flip side, I wonder a bit about whether Toronto should’ve been in on Olen Zellweger, who went to Buffalo for a mid-tier prospect and a second round pick. I think Garnet Hathaway’s pretty low on long-term gas in the tank, but he might have been an interesting fourth-line option given how little it took for Florida to acquire him from Philadelphia with half retention. Going back to Knies, I don’t know how Toronto couldn’t get across the finish line with Chicago for a home-run swing given the deal they eventually made for Bowen Byram.

There’s still a lot whispering around the market and I’m curious to see how Toronto approaches the next few days. I get the sense they’re not done tinkering with the blue line, though to what degree they’re successful in rocking the boat remains to be seen. I think there’s still a thousand different ways they could go in goal. And who is Jim Hiller hiring to replace Mike Van Ryn, anyway?

July waits with baited breath.

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About HIPT

Hockey In Paranoid Times is a diary and blog from Jeff Veillette, who has nearly 20 years of experience in hockey media and seven years of experience in hockey operations.

HIPT is a throwback to the early era of the online blogosphere – no algorithms, no engagebait, no multimedia overload. Just a few thoughts as they come to mind in a simple format.