Toronto Maple Leafs may be looking to trade expensive first round pick defenseman

The Toronto Maple Leafs could potentially be looking to trade Timothy Liljegren this season based on his pre-season play as well as his cap hit, which is difficult to justify for the team.

The Leafs are in action tonight for their final pre-season game of the year as they take on the Detroit Red Wings. Team reporter Jonas Siegel found it significant that veteran defenseman Timothy Liljegren did not suit up for the contest, with the team instead opting to give both Connor Timmins and Phillippe Myers one more game before the regular season kicks off on Wednesday against Montreal.

This is a fairly big deal. Liljegren has become a veteran at this point with 196 regular-season games under his belt, all with the Maple Leafs. As a 25-year-old, he is also just entering his prime, so the next few seasons will likely be among the best of his career. Now it could be that the team has seen enough from him so they just decided to give him the night off, but typically teams like to play their real line ups for their final pre-season games. This could be an indicator that Liljegren is on his way to being a healthy scratch opening night.

Famous Leafs fan Steve Dangle has been saying this about Liljegren for some time now. He has made it clear that he does not think Liljegren is worth his cap hit compared to the guys behind him, including Timmins and Myers, who are making league minimum. Perhaps Craig Berube agrees with him.

That being said, Liljegren's advanced analytics are actually fairly good, at least according to publicly available models. These numbers rarely tell the full story though and for whatever reason, the fit in Toronto just seems to be slightly off for Liljegren. Furthermore, his performance in the playoffs has mirrored that of his teammates, which is not a good thing for players in Toronto.

At this point, there has not been any word from the Leafs regarding Liljegren's status. As such, we can probably expect him to be on the opening night roster. Whether or not he ends the season on the Leafs however, is another question entirely, and one that has a far less certain answer.

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