We cant really afford to retain.

Risto is the wrong fit for the Leafs. Offensive dman like Barrie didnt fit and it turned out terribly. Risto would be the v2.0 just with a worse defenseman.

With Buffalo cap situation, I don’t even thk he’s available at 50%. Especially without something stupid

You don’t want Risto, unless you want to make your team even worse defensively.

Is it even possible to get worse tbh

Ristolainen may be one of the few that can make their defense worse.

Barrie was much better under Keefe. But Risto legit is horrible defensively. No thanks. Also the notion we need a RHD is so overblown. Give Dermott and Lehtonen a chance to prove they can play there. Also in Keefe's system the defence often switches back and forth from side to side when they circle back to keep possession. With that in mind, what hand a player shoots isn't really that important. Under Babs, he wanted guys going straight up and down the ice and if you do that, being on your forehand makes it easier.

the leafs arent that bad defensively. freddie was horrible but the leafs were around league average

Yes it could be like it was under Babs. The defence is fine and everyone will shut up about it next year or in the playoffs and then everyone will say something about them being soft, or scoring too many goals or Andersen is leaving so they will be screwed. There is always going to be some overblown reason people like you will claim is the reason TO will never win anything.

to get any sort of value out of risto he needs to be playing on the 3rd pair primarily in the offensive zone with good players and even then he still isnt that good. at whatever cap hit he'll be at he isnt worth it. future considerations for risto at 50% would be a bad trade for the leafs unless they were planning on immediately flipping him. Lilly is easily better then him and is at a cap hit under 900k

No interest there at all. Overpaid and an under-performer for his pay grade.

Hard no.

in general he wont fit as if u look at leafs history he tries to pick a fight with almost every member of the team (Kadri, Matthews, Van Remsdyk, etc). His +/- is atrocious and sure he gets 40 points but with a team needing a solid defender I just dont see it working out. I get it after his comments he probably is gone, but I dont see dubas making a deal for him unless there are no other options

Yeah, Risto can put up a decent amount of points, but the rest of his stats are atrocious. I just don’t understand how he can play as many minutes as he does while being consistently really bad.

Disagree. The Leafs are HORRIBLE defensively.

All of that is not on the D Core though.

Andersen was sub par and the team played **** defensive hockey all year.

The Left Side of the D Core is great. (When healthy). The Right Side is barley AHL acceptable as it stands now.

That needs to improve but, the team's overall defensive game needs to be a lot better to see real results.

Risto sucks, pass.

bit salty but whatever.

Optimistic as ever.

Its just such a tired argument. And one that only makes sense if you ignore a pile of pertinent information. And whenever someone educates you on that pertinent information you laugh and say "Ah you're salty". Just outright admit you're a troll if you have no interest in having a meaningful discussion.

Its true. They arent fantastic defensively by any means but they're fine. They will end up replacing ceci with liljegren or Lehtonen who are both huge upgrades. Barrie will be replaced by someone far better defensively. Rielly sat out for a while and he played injured fir around two months so that will make them better. Muzzin was injured for a little bit, maybe a month if I remember correctly but it could have only been a few weeks. Muzzin and Zaitsev almost completely shut down the bruins 1st line at 5v5 in the playoffs last year, holl is an upgrade over Z in every way. The pair of them did very well against top competition when they were together this season.

Muzzin-Holl has proven to be a strong shut down pair against top competition.
Rielly-? Will be strong when rielly is actually healthy and they pair him with someone who can defend. Rielly has proven he can be successful with extremely weak partners while playing against top competition. Its likely they find him someone better and he will return to form while playing against secondary competition.
Sandin-Liljegren/Lehtonen/Dermott/Marincin will be an extremely strong 3rd pairing just like last season except sandin Lilly and dermott will all improve. I'm still a bit sceptical about Lehtonen but some of the pre signing with the leafs scouting reports make him look like he could step into the top 4 on quite a few teams. I'm not going to believe it until I see it but if that happens then they will be looking it a strong d core

I was actually joking but apparently some people are just unable to understand sarcasm