Ilya Lyubushkin is a low cost addition that the Leafs know what to expect from

Looking at Lyubushkin’s on-ice numbers with the Ducks is pretty unfair to him. We’ve already learned to not judge that book by its cover when it came to Simon Benoit, and Lyubushkin is really another example in that story. Still, there is something to be said for understanding what situation he is coming from and here it is:

None of those numbers look good but that Corsi against/60 isn’t completely out of place on the high event Leafs. With better goaltending and quality of teammates those goals for numbers will certainly improve.

By a long shot, Lyubushkin’s most frequent defensive partner this season has been Pavel Mintyukov playing 540 minutes together (his next most frequent partner is Cam Fowler at 102 minutes.) Mintyukov is a 20 year old rookie and that is certainly a lot of heavy lifting for Lyubushkin but offers a lot of encouragement to disregard the numbers above. His results were better in Arizona in a more sheltered role and they were solid during his brief time with the Leafs as well.

From a skills perspective, NHL Edge supports what we already knew and that is speed is not Lyubushkin’s game. He’s on the slower side, falling below the 50th percentile for top speed and he has only had 14 speed bursts over 20 mph this season when the league median is 22. The upside is that Lyubushkin brings a heavy shot with him and his 98.6 mph hardest shot is the best on the Leafs. Having Rielly readily available to tee him up sounds like something that can benefit the Leafs net front players like Knies, Bertuzzi, McMann, and Tavares, so while Lyubushkin should not be thought of too much as an offensive weapon, he does bring one thing the offence has been missing.

Short Term/Long Term

In the short term it seems like Lyubushkin will at least get a look with Morgan Rielly as Ilya brings what worked for Toronto last season in the playoffs. It gives Toronto the opportunity to see if the Brodie/Liljegren pairing is something as well, and the Benoit/McCabe pairing doesn’t seem like something Toronto wants to tamper with, just potentially see if they can put them against a more reasonable level of competition.

If the Rielly/Lyubushkin experiment doesn’t work, Lyubushkin is still a great 3rd pairing option and one that would potentially fit with either Brodie or Benoit, depending on how Keefe draws up the assignments. In that situation presumably the Leafs aren’t quite done yet and are still looking for another defenceman before the trade deadline. The addition of Lyubushkin and the subtraction of any other player from the Leafs roster still puts Toronto in a better cap situation than they were in before the trade so there is no reason to believe the Leafs are done.

In the long term, Lyubushkin is a free agent but if he has a successful run in the next couple of months, that will be two times Toronto has worked out well for him and possibly there is a fit for him with the Maple Leafs beyond this season. Ilya is not someone the Leafs should consider at his current $2.75M cap hit (before all the salary retention) but in the $2M neighbourhood he helps with the tougher to play against blueline the Leafs have been going for.

Understandably bringing in someone who is a bottom pairing defenceman based on both utilization and performance isn’t a flashy move and if this is the extent of Brad Treliving’s trade deadline ambitions, it is underwhelming. If the belief is the Leafs needed to make two moves on the blueline, this is certainly one that doesn’t hurt them. And with the lack of right handed shots on the blueline, this was starting to look like a necessity.

Data from PuckIQ, Natural Stat Trick, Evolving Hockey, Capfriendly, and NHL.com