Top Leafs stories of 2024: When Ilya Lyubushkin and Joel Edmundson left in free agency

For whatever reason, Leafs fans were very interested to see which deadline acquisitions left for the Dallas Stars and Los Angeles Kings in free agency this past offseason, even though you all knew the answer.

The Maple Leafs acquired three players at the 2024 trade deadline, all with the intention of bolstering their depth both up front and on the back end. On defence, they re-acquired Ilya Lyubushkin, who played for the post-deadline Leafs in 2021-22, they acquired Joel Edmundson from the Washington Capitals, and up front, they acquired forward Connor Dewar from the Minnesota Wild. The latter returned to the Maple Leafs on a one-year deal this past offseason, but Lyubushkin and Edmundson were able to cash in on their steady presence for the Maple Leafs with multi-year extensions for each of them. Edmundson went on to sign a four-year contract with the Kings worth $3.85 million annually, while Lyubushkin inked a three-year deal worth $3.25 million annually with Dallas.

Both players were fine in their time with the Maple Leafs, but neither player was worth bringing back for the prices they signed for. Edmundson mostly played bottom-pair minutes alongside Timothy Liljegren, with some occasional reps alongside Morgan Rielly, while Lyubushkin primarily played with Rielly the same way he did during the 2021-22 playoff run. Here’s a snippet from our news hit on the departures over the summer from Arun Srinivasan.

Lyubushkin and Edmunson effectively served their purposes, but Chris Tanev and Oliver Ekman-Larsson — especially Tanev — represent a major upgrade for the Maple Leafs’ blue line. Tanev is widely considered one of the best defensive players in the NHL, while Ekman-Larsson can provided some offensive pop against bottom-six opponents at this stage of his career.

As the snippet from our news hit over the summer alludes to, Maple Leafs ultimately came out on top with better value in free agency, emphasizing the importance of improving their puck-moving ability on defence while acknowledging the need for defensively competent players. The result was a six-year contract for Chris Tanev, who most recently played for the Stars and had been linked to the Leafs for what felt like forever, and a four-year deal for Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who saw a career resurgence with the Florida Panthers in 2023-24 and went on to win a Stanley Cup with them.

Both players are easily better puck-movers than the two players they lost this offseason, with Tanev going on to form one of the better shutdown pairings in the league with Jake McCabe and Ekman-Larsson currently second among Leafs defenders in points with 11 in 32 games. The need for offence on the back end is still a big one, but less so than it was last year.