NHL Trade Deadline: The best defensive partner options for Morgan Rielly

We’re approaching the NHL trade deadline, and a familiar question arises once again. Who is Morgan Rielly going to play with in the postseason?

Toronto Maple Leafs fans thought that question was answered in the offseason when GM Brad Treliving signed grizzled veteran Chris Tanev to a long-term deal. A week into the season, however, Craig Berube found magic with the McCabe–Tanev pairing.

Morgan Rielly once again found himself with a rotating cast on his pair. Going through Rielly’s most frequent partners this season by total time on ice:

Oliver Ekman-Larsson (OEL): 387 minutes

Phillippe Myers: 226 minutes

Tanev: 138 minutes

McCabe: 105 minutes

Timmins: 77 minutes

Benoit: 34 minutes

Hakanpaa: 23 minutes

Needless to say, the longest-tenured Maple Leaf has played with everybody at this point. We saw how Thomas Chabot struggled the past few years with Ottawa without a consistent defence partner until the acquisition of Nick Jensen allowed him to re-find his two-way game.

Rielly’s game was trending upwards when we left for the 4-Nations break. While the Leafs defenceman hasn’t always been the best defensive player, I think especially this year his play in his own end has been much better.

Those improvements came at a steep cost to his offensive production, but finding Rielly a long-term partner could go a long way in not just maximizing #44, but also the Leafs’ success come the postseason.

Unfortunately, Toronto has more than one hole to fill at this year’s deadline. With Max Domi’s struggles, Toronto once again find themselves in dire need of depth scoring. With limited cap resources, Toronto has to choose. They can add a big cap hit defenceman or a big cap hit forward but it’s unlikely that they can add both.

With that in mind, I’ve split up my list of potential defensive trade acquisitions into two sections.

Setting the Requirements:

Adding any defenceman alongside Rielly has two main criteria.

1. He has to be good defensively. Toronto can’t afford to use the Rielly pair as a sheltered, limited defensive-zone time pairing come playoff time. It puts far too much stress on the McCabe–Tanev pairing, and I’m not sure an OEL–Timmins/Myers pair is one that you could rely on consistently either.
2. Be able to penalty kill. McCabe and Tanev will take on most of the penalty kill reps, but Toronto is currently trotting out Simon Benoit and OEL on PK2. While Benoit was an excellent penalty killer last season for Toronto, he’s been nowhere near the same player this season.

Pricier Adds

If Toronto is going to focus most of its moveable cap space on a defenceman (I find that unlikely given reports on the team’s focus on bringing in a legitimate third-line centre), there are two players I think could be worthwhile adds (one more so than the other)

Colton Parayko

Parayko isn’t a complete stranger to playing with Morgan Rielly. The two were a pair for Team North America back in 2016–17, the last time the NHL tried a best-on-best style of tournament. While we’re a good nine years removed from that tournament, Rielly and Parayko were a solid pair together. Parayko’s an incredible skater at his size, hits and blocks shots, and is an absolute workhorse. He’s averaging over 24 minutes a game this season and has an absolute howitzer of a shot from the point too.

He’s already put up a career-high in goals this season with 12 and is well on pace to surpass his career-high in points. Parayko lost a few seasons of his prime recovering from injury but he’s been one of the most underrated defencemen in the league this year on a pretty bad St. Louis team.

Parayko’s cap hit at $6.5M for four more years is a tough one for Toronto to fit, and given the 6’6” defenceman’s form this season the acquisition cost wouldn’t be cheap, but if Toronto wants someone to play with Morgan Rielly for the next four years, there are few better bets than Parayko.

Connor Murphy

I’m personally not as big of a fan of Murphy as a fit next to Rielly. Yes, he checks off the defensive and penalty kill requirements I’ve outlined above and his $4.4M, two year contract is much easier to match or even get down with retention than Parayko.

However, unlike Parayko who’s basically been uninjured the last three seasons (80, 79, 82 GP), Murphy’s only played 57, 80, and 46 games in that time period. He’s dealt with a litany of injuries and despite posting strong defensive numbers last year, his exits and entry chance denials per All Three Zones were both bottom 20th percentile.

He hits, denies general zone entries well, and retrieves the puck well, but he struggles to get the puck out of the zone and when he does allow an entry, it’s usually an entry with possession with an ensuing scoring chance. Parayko wasn’t particularly amazing at stopping chances off of zone entries either, but he was much better than Murphy and he was infinitely better with exits and entries.

I think if Murphy’s asking price starts at a first-round pick, Toronto would be wise to either go after the bigger fish in Parayko with more assets or opt for a player in my next category.

Luke Schenn 2.0?

Rielly’s had success with lower-quality defence partners, like Luke Schenn who didn’t cost Toronto all that much at the trade deadline back when they acquired him. Adam Wilsby was someone I really contemplated, even with the small sample size and the fact he’s a LHD, I thought like Moverare, he was potentially a Ty Emberson type (who I hyped up as a potential Leafs acquisition last year).

Instead, my dreams and hopes have transferred elsewhere as Wilsby extended with Nashville last week. There’s still a chance Barry Trotz decides to move on from him (Fabbro and Carrier), but I think he’s safely off the trade board for now.

Egor Zamula

This guy is a really nice potential budget option for the Leafs. He’s only making $1.7M for two seasons, making it very easy to fit under the Leafs cap structure, but most importantly he’s only 24 with a ton of tools to develop into exactly what Rielly needs.

Zamula only plays around 17 minutes a night for Philadelphia, and he’s played almost exclusively with Ristolainen when both are healthy. He’s currently sixth on the Flyers in ATOI and was a health scratch for parts of November and December watching Emil Andrae supplant him at times for a role on the roster.

Zamula’s also played sparingly on the penalty kill for Philadelphia (he’s only logged about 15 minutes of penalty kill time in 40 games this year) but at 6’3”, 200 lbs, there’s room for him to develop into that role.

For a guy of his size, you’d think Zamula is someone who would hit a ton and block lots of shots which isn’t the case. However, he’s extremely effective at defending the line, as in “one of the best in the league at it” effective. He’s also an underrated puck mover although he struggled earlier in the season with that until he learned to simplify his game.

At his best, Zamula could fit exactly what Rielly needs. He’s an elite rush defender, an accurate passer who’s positionally strong defensively and learning to play a more simplified game. While that pair would lack real aggression or physicality to it (which is what Luke Schenn brought to his partnership with Rielly), Brodie’s effectiveness with Rielly gives me confidence that this pair can make it work.

Juuso Valimaki

Valimaki is another guy I think could be great with Rielly. He played super well in a second pair role with Kesselring last year, but with the additions of Sergachev, Marino and Maatta in Utah the 26-year-old Finnish player has lost his spot in the lineup.

He’s only making $2M for two seasons with Utah, which again makes it relatively easy for Toronto to fit in under their cap. Valimaki is the definition of a jack of all trades. He’s not particularly elite at any aspect of the game, but he competes hard, moves the puck well and has always been solid on breakouts as a passer.

The 6’2”, 200 lb defenceman is left-handed like Zamula but has experience playing on the right. Drafted by Treliving back in 2017 there’s some familiarity between the the Leafs GM and the player as well. Ultimately, I think Valimaki’s best role in the NHL is a connector of play, where he can use his quick-strike passing to help a team build offence in transition.

He’s another low-event type of player that would profile well next to Rielly who at his best prefers to jump in on rushes and carry the puck in offensively. He’s also logged much more time shorthanded this year; he’s up to over a minute a game on the penalty kill this season.

At worst, Valimaki is a clear upgrade on Benoit who can play alongside Rielly or in either of the bottom pair spots. He’s also got experience playing a bigger role, logging over 18 minutes a game the last two seasons. I doubt we’ll see 2022–23 Valimaki, who was a 35-point defenceman, but the added puck-moving ability without the frequent brainfart a la Conor Timmins would be a welcome addition.

Other options

For the record, I considered Kaedan Korczak in this article. He’s another player I think that profiles well next to Rielly and still young as well who could develop into a really good player with some consistent playing time. Unfortunately, with Nicolas Hague hitting RFA at the end of the year, I do wonder if there’s a world where Vegas trades either Hague or Whitecloud after the season is over and Korczak plays full-time on the bottom pair. Given Korczak only costs $825K against the cap, I just couldn’t justify a world where Vegas gives up on him before giving him a real chance to solidify himself in their lineup.

Other names that were on the shortlist but didn’t quite make the cut were Nashville defencemen Jeremy Lauzon and Luke Schenn,

At the end of the day, these are the four defencemen I chose to profile in today’s article on who the Leafs could aim to trade for to pair next to Morgan Rielly at the trade deadline this year. Let me know your thoughts, are there any names you think I missed?