Sandin trade offers a cautionary tale
Defenceman’s success on Capitals shows importance of developing prospects to full potential
The surprising Washington Capitals are riding a March wave that has seen them charge into a playoff spot at a rate second only to the red-hot Nashville Predators. It makes little sense.
Their 9-4-0 record this month includes a 7-3-0 stretch following an NHL trade deadline when they shipped forwards Evgeny Kuznetsov to Carolina and Anthony Mantha to Vegas, and defenceman Joel Edmundson to the Maple Leafs while retaining a bunch of salary and collecting a bevy of draft picks.
They’ve somehow survived with no Nicklas Bäckström (hip), the lengthy absence of Kuznetsov (NHL/NHLPA player assistance program), a career-worst goal slump earlier this season by Wayne Gretzky chaser Alexander Ovechkin and, more recently, a six-game suspension to Tom Wilson. Even their goalies have been average at best: Charlie Lindgren ranks 16th in save percentage (. 912) among goalies with at least 20 games played; Darcy Kuemper is 58th, at .888.
Really, the Capitals have no business being where they are.
So, how are they pulling off this run? Ovechkin finding his scoring touch has helped — the NHL’s first star of the week has potted eight goals in his last six games. So, too, has Dylan Strome, who’s continued a career-best pace with nine points in his last five games. But one quiet contributor who will be familiar to Leafs fans is Rasmus Sandin.
The move at last year’s trade deadline was less heralded than Toronto’s pickups of veteran centre Ryan O’Reilly and defencemen Luke Schenn and Jake McCabe. But what was obvious, as Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe stated at the time, was that the arrivals of Schenn and McCabe would have likely pushed Sandin down the pecking order and into healthy scratch territory once again come playoff time.
“He played a lot of good hockey for us. He’s a young player. That has value in the league,” Keefe said of Sandin. “Kyle (Dubas) was able to get a first-round pick and bring in a player that has a similar skill set but is further along the path, has more experience in the playoffs.”
That player was Erik Gustafsson, who left the Leafs to join the New York Rangers as a free agent in the off-season. The pick? That turned into Easton Cowan of the London Knights, a highly regarded prospect who ended the OHL season on a 36-game point streak this week.
Most NHL teams are clamouring for depth on defence while also aiming to create an environment that allows their prospects to develop into NHL players.
Dubas selected the left-shooting Swede in the first round in 2018 via the Soo Greyhounds with skill, smarts and puck possession in mind.
“They drafted him to make plays, to quarterback the power play down the road, to handle the puck,” Mark Seidel, director of the independent scouting service North American Central Scouting, told the Star’s Dave Feschuk that year.
Why has this seemingly happened in a short period of time for the recently turned 24-year-old in Washington while it never happened over four years in Toronto? It starts with opportunity.
“The best thing that happened for Sandin was that when he went to Washington (John) Carlson was injured and he got a ton of ice time, and he seized the opportunity,” former Leaf and now TSN analyst Mike Johnson said this week on my “NHL Morning Skate Show.”
Sandin averaged 23 minutes of ice time in the second half of last season in Washington, five minutes more than in Toronto, and collected 15 points in only 19 games. This year, he is second on the Capitals in ice time at 21:20, behind Carlson (25:42), and the Capitals so believe in his future that they and signed him to a five-year, $23-million (U.S.) contract extension. He has 23 points in 63 games this season, second only to Carlson among Capitals defencemen.
Was it a case of not being one of Keefe’s type of players? Or did Toronto simply sell too early, believing a little more grit and veteran experience for the playoffs in the short term was the higher priority? Defencemen can take longer to develop, of course, but they are also always in high demand.
Leafs general manager Brad Treliving chose not to trade away draft selections and prospects at the deadline this month, unlike his predecessor Dubas the last number of years. Holding on to those assets is important, but so too is developing whatever prospects you have to their fullest potential. This proved not to be the case with Sandin. The good news is, even if one feels like the Leafs lost that trade, they appear to have hit the mark with Cowan.
It does seem that developing prospects has been more of a priority for Treliving. Leafs Matthew Knies and Joseph Woll, both drafted by Dubas, have found regular roles. Bobby McMann has proved to be a diamond in the rough as a sixthround pick. He held onto both Timothy Liljegren (a first-round pick in 2017, one year before Sandin) and Nick Robertson (second-rounder in 2019), both of whom may get an opportunity to evolve like Knies and Woll, rather than on another NHL team like Sandin has.
Leafs fans can only hope it plays out that way. The list of players who got away is long enough as it is.