Darren Raddysh trade grades: Maple Leafs fill massive need, Lightning surprise with unexpected move
· Yahoo Sports
Darren Raddysh trade grades: Maple Leafs fill massive need, Lightning surprise with unexpected move originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Visit rouesnews.click for more information.
The Tampa Bay Lightning traded Darren Raddysh after the best season of his NHL career.
On paper, that sounds very weird, but it actually made a lot of sense for the Lightning to pull off a deal with the Toronto Maple Leafs on Friday.
Now when you read that it only cost Toronto a fifth-round pick, it seems odd again, but the key is this: Raddysh was heading for free agency.
With that in mind, both teams did the best they could here.
MORE: Mitch Marner can't quite escape the haters
Darren Raddysh trade grades
Maple Leafs: A
The Maple Leafs needed to upgrade their defense, and they snuck their way to the best defenseman in this free agent class without needing to get into a bidding war against any other team.
Raddysh is coming off a season in which he had 70 points in 73 games, with 22 goals and 48 assists.
His previous career-high for points in a season was 37. That feels like it creates a slight risk that this was a one-hit wonder, but Raddysh was so good in 2025-26, and that can't be a total fluke.
Toronto paying a fifth-round pick for the rights to negotiate with Raddysh is practically no cost at all, and now they've got the defenseman signed to an eight-year contract.
The only loose knot here is Morgan Rielly, who surely will get traded away from Toronto now. The parameters of that deal will feel a bit like the final leg of determining just how good the Raddysh trade was for Toronto.
Lightning: B
There's nothing inherently wrong with this for the Lightning. They clearly felt they weren't going to re-sign Raddysh, and so they got a draft pick in return for him.
It feels like if Tampa Bay had made it very public that they were looking to deal Raddysh's pending free agent rights, though, that maybe a different team would've offered better than a fifth-round pick.
There's no way to know from outside what negotiations may have taken place, though, and so it's worth giving Tampa Bay credit for at least getting a small asset out of a guy who evidently was going to leave anyway.