Report: Maple Leafs making calls on a pair of Washington defencemen

Welcome back to the Maple Leafs hunt for defencemen. Today we find ourselves in Washington with the two most recent reports on Toronto’s activity in the trade market take us there.

Here is the most recent update this morning:

Joel Edmundson is a name we’ve heard around the Leafs for a while. Like the Lyubushkin acquisition this seems like it would be more about adding depth and a shift in the style of play of the Leafs blueline rather than addressing their top pairing needs. Edmundson is a left shot and a rental, so he doesn’t check the boxes that the Leafs have primarily been looking at, but like so many of the Leafs current LHD, Edmundson does play on the right side from time to time.

He doesn’t have huge hit counts but he is also 6’5 which is unteachable and has a history of increasing those hit counts in the playoffs. He’s been averaging about 16:26 minutes a night on the Capitals this year.

Hockey Reference also says his name is “Crop Top King” which is intriguing and might be worth learning more about.

Dreger reported that the Bruins are out in front on him and I’m not sure Edmundson is someone you get in a bidding war over but as much as the Leafs shouldn’t be bending over backwards to acquire Edmundson, they also shouldn’t be thrilled to potentially play against him in the first round either as he’s the type of player who makes trouble for the  Leafs if they can’t exploit him off the rush.

Following the Leafs game last night, Frank Seravalli briefly appeared on Sportsnet and while he mainly focused on the number of irons that Brad Treliving has in the fire around the league regarding defencemen, the one specific player he used as an example was Nick Jensen of the Washington Capitals.

Jensen might not be the flashiest option but he is signed for two more seasons at $4.05M. He’s playing over 19 minutes a night on average, but like Edmundson hasn’t been hitting a whole lot this year, though we’ve seen that be part of his game.

If salary retention is an option for the Leafs it might be worth taking a chance on the 33 year old defenceman.