Breaking Down Maple Leafs’ Blockbuster for Blues’ O’Reilly

February 18, 2023February 18, 2023 Rob Couch

The Toronto Maple Leafs have played their hand before the trade deadline as they are the third team to pull off a blockbuster for a couple of players they wanted. The Maple Leafs made a 3-way trade with the St. Louis Blues and Minnesota Wild to acquire Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari. The Blues received Mikhail Abramov, Adam Gaudette, Toronto’s 2023 first round pick, Ottawa’s 2023 third round pick, Toronto’s 2024 second round pick, and Josh Pillar while the Wild received Toronto’s 2025 fourth round pick for retaining 25 percent of O’Reilly’s salary cap. Now that the details have all been shared, let’s dive into what the trade does for each of the three teams and how good of a move it was.

Toronto Maple Leafs

The Maple Leafs made sure to get ahead of things as they made the trade for two centers a couple weeks before the trade deadline. They have the cap space to work with since Jake Muzzin’s injury, and took advantage of it. This trade really shores up their center depth even though Acciari may play on the wing.

The trade helps Toronto’s bottom-six a ton and gives them options at center as O’Reilly has a 54.1 faceoff percentage and Acciari has a 53.5. O’Reilly has finished in the top-five in Selke Trophy voting in each of the past four seasons and despite having a down year offensively, has a cap hit of just $1.875 million until the end of the season. Seeing how he was born in Ontario, there is always that possibility that he would want to re-sign, if the Maple Leafs have the space and desire.

The Maple Leafs did give up a first, second, third, and fourth round pick for two rentals which indicate they are all in this season. That may be an overpayment and give flashbacks to when they traded a first rounder for Nick Foligno as a rental, but something had to be done in order to give the team the best shot at going deeper into the playoffs this season.

St. Louis Blues

The Blues have done it again, they packaged two rentals for a first round pick and more and may not be getting enough credit for the value they’ve gotten back for their players. They are up to three first round picks in 2023 as well as an extra third rounder while they’ve shipped off some veterans and freed up a ton of cap space to reset in the summer. This isn’t the end for the Blues as they have a number of key players still under contract and room to now make impactful moves in free agency without costing them any assets. This also allows them to insert more young into their lineup to finish up the season and give them some reps.

In terms of players they got back, Abramov is a former fourth round pick taken by the Maple Leafs in 2019 who had three strong years in junior before jumping to pro. He is in his second season in the AHL where his offence has yet to really reach the level it was in junior. Seeing as he is still only 21 years old, there is still time and potential there. He should still be able to make it to the NHL eventually. As for Gaudette, he’s been very productive in the AHL this season and is a fringe NHLer. The 26-year-old is a RFA at the end of the season and has 27 goals and 70 points in 218 career NHL games.

Minnesota Wild

The Wild actually have cap space that they utilized already. Seeing as they have two large buyouts on the books in full effect, this was unpredicted, but the team utilized what they had to get an extra draft pick to work with. They ate $1.875 million of O’Reilly’s contract, and though they could have used him in a trade, it may be best for them to stand pat or make minor upgrades at the deadline seeing as they are bouncing between the second wildcard spot and ninth in the conference.