Kyle Dubas wraps up busy deadline by acquiring giant centre, leaving it up to Leafs to put it together

Winnipeg Jets forward Mark Scheifele gets rubbed out along the boards by Calgary Flames’ Radim Zohorna — now with the Leafs. Photo by Jeff McIntosh /THE CANADIAN PRESS

Now, it’s on coach Sheldon Keefe and the players to make it all work.

After reshaping one-third of the Leafs roster in the past couple of weeks, Dubas made one minor move on Friday before the National Hockey League deadline hit at 3 p.m., acquiring centre Radim Zohorna from the Calgary Flames for forward Dryden Hunt. The 6-foot-7, 225-pound Zohorna has played in 33 NHL games with Pittsburgh and Calgary, recording 10 points. At most, the 26-year-old native of Czechia will be a bottom-six option, along with several Toronto Marlies including Pontus Holmberg and Bobby McMann.

Dubas put the biggest pieces of his trade puzzle in place well before the deadline, starting two weeks ago when he acquired forwards Ryan O’Reilly and Noel Acciari from St. Louis. Next came defenceman Jake McCabe and forward Sam Lafferty from Chicago on Monday, followed on Tuesday by defencemen Luke Schenn from Vancouver and Erik Gustafsson from Washington.

Heading out of town were forwards Pierre Engvall and Joey Anderson, and defenceman Rasmus Sandin.

The GM’s work is done. We’ll find out, starting some time beyond mid-April, whether Dubas got it right.
Today, the Leafs are a better team than they were a few weeks ago, one with more depth, snarl and determination.

“We feel good about where we’re at right now,” Dubas told the media in Vancouver, where the Leafs play the Canucks on Saturday night. “I never set out to try to make a lot of changes. In a perfect year, I think you’d feel that you didn’t have to do anything.

“The goal of the team is to win, and I think we have tried to set up, as best possible, to give ourselves as good a chance against whomever we contest (in the Stanley Cup playoffs). It’s clinching our spot and making sure we are in, and then getting ourselves ready for who that opponent is.

“If it is Tampa (in the first round), we know how hard it’s going to be. What we’re about to try to do is going to be extremely difficult and we have to ready ourselves each day leading into that to clinch our spot, and be ready for what’s ahead. It’s a tough road and we know that.”

With each of the six new players in the lineup for the first time on Thursday night in Calgary, we got a glimpse of how the Leafs might handle that tough road. Dubas liked what he saw as the Leafs shut down a Flames team that is in full-on desperation mode to make the post-season. Calgary had just five shots on goal in the third period and the Leafs scored the only goal in the final 20 minutes, winning 2-1.

“The third period exemplifies the difference of the team, a little bit more competitive, a little bit more sacrifice, willing to put themselves on the line to win pucks, do the right things defensively that are not necessarily the fanciest or the sexiest things, but they contribute to winning,” Dubas said. “I sense with the players we have added and the growth of some of the guys internally that we’re far better in that realm.”

The new players aren’t going to be relied upon to be the difference-makers once the playoffs start. O’Reilly has that potential, but the Leafs will go as far as Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander and John Tavares carry them.

In regard to the goaltending, Dubas told anyone who was listening in recent weeks that he was happy with Ilya Samsonov, Matt Murray (who is slated to return from an ankle injury and possibly start on Saturday) and Joe Woll. There was speculation the Leafs would try to add goaltending insurance, but Dubas indicated that once he made three trades on Tuesday (including shipping out Engvall for a draft pick), he knew he was done, more or less.

“I’m very confident in our goaltenders,” Dubas said. “If (Samsonov) has had any games where he has struggled, he has right away been able to stop that and get it rolling the other way.

“I think the question is, how confident are you that they can do it in the end and pull through? Matt has done it in the past. There weren’t really other guys available that have, and we believe in the potential of Ilya and Joe.”

Dubas also didn’t move out a defenceman, and that’s fine. That the Leafs have nine NHL D-men is not the problem some think it is. No team has ever lost because it had an abundance of depth.

The Leafs also left themselves enough financial room to sign forward Matt Knies once his season at the U. of Minnesota concludes.

Keefe has 20 games to get his lineup in order and to put the players in the best positions to succeed.

His boss has set him up well.