{"id":747437,"date":"2026-06-19T20:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T20:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/747437\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T20:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T20:50:09","slug":"nhl-contract-grades-darren-raddysh-is-a-gamble-worth-taking-for-the-maple-leafs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/747437\/","title":{"rendered":"NHL contract grades: Darren Raddysh is a gamble worth taking for the Maple Leafs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maple Leafs sign defenseman Darren Raddysh to an eight-year deal with an $8.5 million AAV.<\/p>\n

Dom Luszczyszyn: Darren Raddysh\u2019s out-of-nowhere breakout at 30 could not have come at a better time; now he\u2019s cashed in to the tune of $68 million over the next eight years with Toronto.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

That \u201cif,\u201d 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\u2019s what made Raddysh this year\u2019s biggest boom-or-bust UFA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Raddysh\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s most recent work being so strong, the odds are on Toronto\u2019s side that this will work out \u2014 there\u2019s just a ton of variance to that.<\/p>\n

There is a sense that Raddysh is just a booming slap-shot and not much else, but that underrates all the other fantastic stuff<\/a> 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\u2019s production regresses, he showcased a lot of tools last season that make it seem like he\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n

If and could, hope and cope. That\u2019s the play here and there\u2019s a real chance the Leafs hit a home run if Raddysh can repeat last year\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

But can\u2019t and won\u2019t 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\u2019s a risk they have to take \u2014 it beats the previous strategy of lining up bunts.<\/p>\n

Contract grade: B<\/p>\n

Mike Babcock\u2019s back, Connor McDavid gets his guy<\/p>\n

Sean Gentille and Sean McIndoe<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

For the Leafs, this contract is the literal definition of a high-risk, high-reward gamble. He\u2019s 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\u2019s better defensive systems\/environments.<\/p>\n

My first thought when envisioning the fit between Raddysh and the Leafs is how much his bomb of a shot should boost the team\u2019s 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 \u2014 opposing penalty kills never had to respect Morgan Rielly\u2019s shot, which meant less time and space for the team\u2019s flank attackers to make plays.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m fairly confident that Raddysh\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

However, it\u2019s harder to predict whether he\u2019ll continue being a strong, top-pair caliber even-strength play-driver. Yes, Raddysh\u2019s 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\u2019s unknown whether Raddysh will be able to replicate that transitional impact in a new environment, especially since he isn\u2019t the most mobile\/dynamic player.<\/p>\n

In the grand scheme, an $8.5 million AAV is steep, but it\u2019s 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\u2019s also hard to be too critical of the contract doled out considering the lack of alternative options \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Contract grade: B-<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs sign defenseman Darren Raddysh to an eight-year deal with an $8.5 million AAV. Dom Luszczyszyn: Darren…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":747438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85,2370],"class_list":["post-747437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports","tag-toronto-maple-leafs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}