The Toronto Maple Leafs lost an entertaining game to the St. Louis Blues last night, then went and made a trade after the game.
The move solves the Toronto Maple Leafs Nick Ritchie problem by sending him to the Arizona Coyotes in exchange for Ilya Lyubushkin and Ryan Dzingle.
This moves allows the Leafs to get deeper, and to get rid of the Nick Ritchie contract that carried a $2.5 cap hit into next season.
The Leafs themselves practice the Studs and Duds philosophy of salary cap management that recognizes that the differences between non-star players are so minor to be practically non-existent that you should never pay them much more than the league minimum, and therefore the Nick Ritchie signing was always a mistake, as I said the day it happened.