What Does pGPS Say About the Harrington for Rychel Trade?

It’s been a couple of weeks now since the Leafs made the draft day trade that sent prospect Scott Harrington and a conditional fifth-rounder to the Columbus Blue Jackets in exchange for Kerby Rychel.

In retrospect, that’s probably the Leafs’ most universally well-liked move of the off-season.

A first-rounder of the 2013 draft, Rychel plays a hard-nosed, well-rounded game. He was a two-time 40 goal-scorer in the OHL, so he has some legitimate skill, too.

Harrington was a second-rounder in the 2011 draft and came over to the Leafs as part of the Phil Kessel trade. He’s a stay-at-home defenseman that spent half of his season with the Leafs and half of it with the Marlies before being shut down for the year with injury in February.

Generally speaking, it’s not surprising that Leafs fans favor a deal that saw the team move out a defenseman considered to not much offense to give in exchange for someone that people think could total as many as 30-40 points in the NHL in a given season some day.

Projection tools are fun, so I thought I’d check to see if people’s optimism aligns with what the very cool pGPS* has to say. Here were the results:

All indications are that pGPS aligns with how people feel about the trade in general – Rychel is considered to have both a higher upside and a better likelihood of becoming an NHL regular. In fact, Harrington doesn’t even come that close to Rychel, so pGPS really adds to the idea that getting Rychel for Harrington was a stout move by the Leafs. I guess we’ll see for certain one way or the other how things pan out in the coming months and years.

*You can read about pGPS here.