Maple Leafs hope new identity can end skid in playoffs

TORONTO -- Debate, if you want, whether the Toronto Maple Leafs have given up too much of their future in separate trades with the St. Louis Blues and Chicago Blackhawks recently.

At the same time, here's something that is not up for debate:
By adding forwards Ryan O'Reilly, Noel Acciari, Sam Lafferty and defenseman Jake McCabe in the past 10 days, the Maple Leafs are a much tougher team to play against.
They made more moves on Tuesday, acquiring defenseman Luke Schenn from the Vancouver Canucks for a third-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft. They also traded forward Pierre Engvall to the New York Islanders for a third-round pick in the 2023 Upper Deck NHL Draft, and traded defensman Rasmus Sandin to the Washington Capitals for defenseman Erik Gustafsson and a first-round pick belonging to the Boston Bruins in this year's draft.
Will it be enough to make a deep Stanley Cup Playoff run, let alone get past the Tampa Bay Lightning, the team they'll most likely play in the Eastern Conference First Round? That remains to be seen.
But this much is certain: General manager Kyle Dubas and his staff are attempting to give Toronto its best chance to do it by altering the identity of a team that has lost its first series six consecutive times and hasn't won one in 19 years.
"There's no reason to beat around," Dubas told reporters in Seattle Monday. "We've wanted to be more competitive."
They should be exactly that.
Consider this: A year ago, the Maple Leafs took the Lightning, two-time defending Stanley Cup champions at the time, to a seventh game before being eliminated. It says here that, almost 10 months later, they are a more playoff-ready team when it comes to battles in the corners, along the boards and in the dirty areas in front of the net where greasy goals are formulated.
Lightning goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy is the biggest potential difference-maker, sure. He always is. The belief here is that he is the best in the game. There was no goalie available in the open market that the Maple Leafs could have brought in to change that and, to be fair, Ilya Samsonov has, for the most part, had an outstanding season in goal for Toronto.
But in O'Reilly, Acciari, Lafferty and McCabe, there is more grinding, more physicality on Toronto's part. Tampa Bay has plenty of those qualities in the likes of forwards Anthony Cirelli, Pat Maroon, Corey Perry and Tanner Jeannot, acquired from the Nashville Predators on Sunday. Now, after their recent moves, the Maple Leafs are better equipped to push back, whether it be against Tampa Bay or, somewhere down the road, the Boston Bruins, who added beef to their lineup by adding defenseman Dmitry Orlov and forward Garnet Hathaway in a trade with the Washington Capitals.
In the process, Toronto seems to have taken a page out of the Lightning's primer for success.
In 2020 the Lightning acquired grinding forwards Barclay Goodrow and Blake Coleman in separate deals that cost Tampa Bay a first-round pick in each one as part of those respective packages. When asked by NHL.com at the time about the high price paid for those players, general manager Julien BriseBois said they'd been targeted by the organization to fit the need of making the Lightning, who'd been swept in the 2019 Stanley Cup First Round by the underdog Columbus Blue Jackets, "a tougher team to play against."
Sound familiar?
To this day, Goodrow's highest season point total is 33, Coleman's 36. No matter. They weren't acquired for their offense. The Lightning went on to win the first of two consecutive Stanley Cups later that year. They filled a need, much like the Maple Leafs have done. That doesn't guarantee Toronto will even win one round. But it gives them a better chance.
RELATED: [2022-23 NHL Trade Tracker]
On Sunday, the Lightning acquired Jeannot from Nashville for defenseman Cal Foote, a conditional first-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, a second-round pick in the 2024 NHL Draft, and a third, fourth and fifth-round pick in the 2023 NHL Draft. When asked Monday about the steep cost, BriseBois was candid in his response.
"At the end of the day, I know there's a perceived value of those picks, but we have a really good idea of what the actual value of those picks are," BriseBois said in Tampa. "Individually, you can go, 'What's that first-round pick worth? What's the second-round pick?' And so forth and so on.
"When we look at what that's worth to us, based on the odds of those picks turning into good NHL players down the road, I'd rather have the good player right now for this season and next and help this group win right now. Because I know what the odds are of those picks turning into players."
About five hours later, Dubas had a similar response on the other side of the continent when asked about the draft capital he's given up recently.
"I think every year we're in it where we're at, we have to give the team the best chance to win," he said.
Due to the two recent trades, coupled with a number made in the past few seasons, the Maple Leafs will be without a first-round draft pick in 2023 and 2025. They don't have a second-round pick until 2027.
The organization doesn't look at it that way. They look at a core featuring Mitchell Marner and Auston Matthews, both 25, and William Nylander, 26, that may not have reached its prime yet. The goal: Try to take advantage of that window and win now.
It's a recipe that has worked in the past. Just ask the Lightning.