Maple Leafs sign defenseman Darren Raddysh to an eight-year deal with an $8.5 million AAV.

Dom Luszczyszyn: Darren Raddysh’s out-of-nowhere breakout at 30 could not have come at a better time; now he’s cashed in to the tune of $68 million over the next eight years with Toronto.

It’s a feel-good story for a lot of reasons. Hometown player gets his big payday, and the Maple Leafs potentially fill their biggest need at the top of their blue line with a defenseman who scored at a near-point-per-game clip last season. Only two Leafs defenders in the modern era have scored at a higher pace than Raddysh did last season: Borje Salming (1977, 1980) and Ian Turnbull (1977). If he can repeat that, Raddysh has potential to be the missing piece as a No. 1 defenseman, and the best option the Leafs have had in that slot in several decades.

That “if,” of course, is colossal. The thing with coming out of nowhere is the risk that the player goes back to nowhere. Raddysh has the potential to be exactly what the Leafs have been missing, but the chances of the clock striking midnight on him now that the big check has cleared are far from insignificant. It’s what made Raddysh this year’s biggest boom-or-bust UFA.

Raddysh’s contract comes in at nearly the exact midpoint between his value prior to his breakout ($4.8 million) and his current value ($12.4 million) based on last year’s explosion. In that sense, the Leafs navigated the risk as best they could and it feels like a risk they have to take given their glaring hole on the blue line. With the cap going up and Raddysh’s most recent work being so strong, the odds are on Toronto’s side that this will work out — there’s just a ton of variance to that.

There is a sense that Raddysh is just a booming slap-shot and not much else, but that underrates all the other fantastic stuff he did last season. In tough minutes, he drove play at five-on-five extremely well and was a gifted puck-mover in all three zones, something the Leafs have been desperately missing for much of the Auston Matthews era. Even if Raddysh’s production regresses, he showcased a lot of tools last season that make it seem like he’ll fit well with the Leafs. Toronto needs a player next to Jake McCabe on the top pair who can actually create with the top line; Raddysh could fit that bill.

If and could, hope and cope. That’s the play here and there’s a real chance the Leafs hit a home run if Raddysh can repeat last year’s breakout, where he secured Norris votes and finished 10th in Net Rating among defensemen. The Leafs have the high-end talent like Tampa Bay to facilitate that.

But can’t and won’t are real possibilities here. The Leafs are swinging for the fences with Raddysh and the chance they completely whiff should not be ignored. Still, that’s a risk they have to take — it beats the previous strategy of lining up bunts.

Contract grade: B

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Harman Dayal: Raddysh is one of the most difficult players in recent memory to project because of how colossal and unexpected the leap in his game was this season.

The 30-year-old right-shot defender was a decent No. 4/5 defender for the last couple of years, but then, shockingly, surged to a high-end top-pair level. Raddysh ranked third among all defensemen by scoring 22 goals and seventh in points with 70 in 73 games. He wasn’t just an empty-calorie point producer, either; he crushed his top-pair assignments with JJ Moser, with the Lightning controlling over 57 percent of high-danger chances and 59 percent of goals during his five-on-five shifts.

For the Leafs, this contract is the literal definition of a high-risk, high-reward gamble. He’s coming off an outrageous, star-level season, but the sample size of him playing at this level is tiny; he was elevated by elite forward talent (the overwhelming majority of his points were scored with Nikita Kucherov on the ice), and he was operating in one of the league’s better defensive systems/environments.

My first thought when envisioning the fit between Raddysh and the Leafs is how much his bomb of a shot should boost the team’s first-unit power play. Raddysh recorded 96 shot attempts that cleared at least 90 miles per hour this season, which ranked in the 99th percentile of all NHL defenders. Toronto has always lacked that kind of shooting threat from the point on the man advantage — opposing penalty kills never had to respect Morgan Rielly’s shot, which meant less time and space for the team’s flank attackers to make plays.

I’m fairly confident that Raddysh’s power-play production will carry over to Toronto, especially because the club has elite forward talent for him to play with, such as Matthews, William Nylander, and quite possibly Gavin McKenna, who should be an excellent NHL power-play weapon from Day 1. This should be a legitimately fun and productive group.

However, it’s harder to predict whether he’ll continue being a strong, top-pair caliber even-strength play-driver. Yes, Raddysh’s zone-exit numbers were excellent in 2025-26, but when you watch the Lightning play, their forwards are also among the best in the league at coming back extremely deep in the defensive zone to provide their defenders with easy breakout options. It’s unknown whether Raddysh will be able to replicate that transitional impact in a new environment, especially since he isn’t the most mobile/dynamic player.

In the grand scheme, an $8.5 million AAV is steep, but it’s not a backbreaking amount in this rising cap world, even if Raddysh regresses a bit and becomes an effective No. 2/3 rather than a true star. It’s also hard to be too critical of the contract doled out considering the lack of alternative options — what other high-end right-shot defender could the Leafs have realistically signed or traded for? This kind of swing is justifiable for an organization that was flush in cap space but lacked meaningful assets to be aggressive on the trade market, even when we acknowledge the risk of paying a huge ticket to a player who may end up being a one-hit wonder.

Contract grade: B-