NHL trade grades: Report cards for biggest deals of 2026 offseasonGreg WyshynskiJun 19, 2026, 10:15 AM ETClose
- Greg Wyshynski is ESPN’s senior NHL writer.
The 2026 NHL offseason trading period has begun.
As the deals continue to roll in, ESPN reporters will be grading all the moves with the biggest impacts, with instant reaction on how the GMs involved did.
The Toronto Maple Leafs and Tampa Bay Lightning kicked things into high gear, with the Leafs landing pending free agent defenseman Darren Raddysh on Friday.
Read on for more, and keep this page bookmarked as the trade volume rises ahead of the NHL draft on June 26-27 and free agency on July 1.
Note: The most recent trades will appear highest up on the page.
June 19: Leafs land Raddysh from Lightning
The Maple Leafs acquired defenseman Darren Raddysh from the Lightning in exchange for Toronto’s fifth-round selection in the 2026 NHL draft.
Raddysh has signed an eight-year contract extension with the Maple Leafs worth $8.5 million annually.
Toronto Maple Leafs
Grade: B
The NHL free agent puddle just got even shallower thanks to Toronto, as Raddysh was one of the best options for offensive defensemen. That mentioned, there’s undeniable risk for the Maple Leafs here. Raddysh, 30, had the best season of his late-blooming NHL career in 2025-26 for the Lightning: career highs in goals (22), assists (48), points (70) and plus-minus (+21), playing a career high 22:42 per contest in 73 games.
That a decent chunk of those points (26) came on a power play featuring NHL MVP Nikita Kucherov, Jake Guentzel, Brayden Point and others shouldn’t be a strike against him. The defenseman with a booming shot will also have ample weaponry in Toronto, with Auston Matthews, William Nylander and potentially Gavin McKenna once the Maple Leafs draft him next week. Please note that Jim Hiller, just hired as Maple Leafs head coach, ran the power play during his four years as an assistant under Mike Babcock in Toronto.
Wyshynski’s Stanley Cup winner seriesThe Carolina Hurricanes are Stanley Cup champions! Here’s a look back at how we celebrated every Stanley Cup champion going back to the 2018 season:
• Panthers 2025 | Panthers 2024
• Knights in 2023 | Avalanche in 2022
• Lightning in 2021 | Lightning in 2020
• Blues in 2019 | Capitals in 2018
Raddysh wasn’t a one-dimensional player in Tampa. GM John Chayka of Toronto called him “one of the NHL’s premier two-way defensemen, combining elite puck-moving ability with poise, competitiveness and strong play in all three zones.” He’s not wrong, based on the results last season.
Emphasis: last season.
Raddysh is one of two things. He could be a defenseman who figured things out a little later in his career — keep in mind he was an undrafted free agent who got his start in the Chicago Blackhawks’ organization in 2017-18 — but then really hit his stride as a top offensive D-man. The Lightning have seen this story before: Dan Boyle was also an undrafted rookie who broke out at 26 but didn’t hit his offensive apex until he was 30 years old (63 points).
Or, Darren Raddysh could be another in a long tradition of NHL players singing for the supper before unrestricted free agency. In his case, he belted out an aria.
The Leafs handed Raddysh an eight-year contract worth $8.5 million against the salary cap annually, which is a slight raise over the $836,000 in base salary he made last season. AFP Analytics expected his contract to net out to around $8 million annually on a six-year term. So the Leafs went a little higher and a little longer than you might want on a player like Raddysh, but given what the market could have been on July 1, they wanted to make sure they got him.
Logistically, he gives Chayka a new PP1 quarterback before the Leafs trade defenseman Morgan Rielly, assuming the seemingly inevitable comes to fruition.
Raddysh may never repeat last season’s numbers, but they also shouldn’t fall off a cliff. He’s a good, solid addition to a Maple Leafs blue line that needed more puck-movers and defenseman that can win the neutral zone. It’s a risk worth taking.
Tampa Bay Lightning
Grade: C+
The Lightning get a fifth-rounder for what amounts to the negotiating rights to Raddysh. Please recall they sent a third-rounder to the Carolina Hurricanes for the negotiating rights to Jake Guentzel back in 2023.
They were hoping Raddysh might stick around on a hometown discount, with other lineup holes to fill and a monster extension for Kucherov looming — he’s entering the final year of his current deal. But with this kind of money on the table, Raddysh was going to walk.
Obviously, the gamble here by GM Julien BriseBois is that they’re going to find another offensive defenseman who can fill the hole created by Raddysh for less money and fewer years than the Leafs handed him. That’s not necessarily someone who can play PP1, assuming that Victor Hedman is good to go next season. But they could use another puck-mover on the right side, and don’t really have anyone in their system that pops out as a potential replacement.
The search begins. — Wyshynski
