I didn’t even know the Leafs made two major trades last Sunday until one of my friends today messaged me and asked “did you see the trades?”, probably because I wasn’t following the Leafs closely lately (since they’re on quite a slump). I was pretty shocked when he showed me an article on TSN talking about the trade.

The Calgary Flames have traded defenceman Dion Phaneuf, forward Fredrik Sjostrom, and prospect defenceman Keith Aulie to the Toronto Maple Leafs in exchange for forwards Matt Stajan, Niklas Hagman, Jamal Mayers and defenceman Ian White.

Source: http://www.tsn.ca/story/?id=308469

That pretty much sums it up. My initial reaction was “wow, we got ripped off big time!”. Stajan and White were in my opinion very hard workers in Toronto, and without Stajan and Hagman providing the offense that was already lacking, who’s gonna score our goals? I also thought White was one of our best defenseman. Now, I don’t even know who Sjostrom is, and my friend said “a fourth-line plug”, so… that’s great. My impression is that we now have two more players that love to hit and draw penalties, adding to our already “tough” team consisting of Beauchemin, Komisarek, Orr, and Rosehill. All in all, I don’t think picking a fight within the first five minutes of the game motivates the team nor the crowd very much anymore…

Then comes the news of the second trade – Blake and Toskala for J S Giguere. I personally like Giguere alot (had him in my fantasy league one year), but I’m one of the few that’s sad to see Toskala go (or am I the only one? ). I really wanted to see Toskala pick up his game and once again shine in Toronto, but I guess that is never going to happen now. I really wish him the best in Anaheim. For Blake, I’m not too sad to see him go because it just seems like he isn’t very enthusiastic to play in Toronto.

I just have to show a youtube video of Toskala because I believe he did try very hard, but I guess he’s just not meant to bring the Leafs to the championship.