Maple Leafs Acquire Ryan O’Rielly and Noel Acciari from the Blues in Monster Deal Signalling They Are All In
Acciari #Acciari
The Toronto Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas said last week that he wasn’t interested in the big names or giving up top picks for a rental, but in his swap with the St. Louis Blues, that’s exactly what he did.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are going all in for this season.
The team announced a huge trade on Friday that sees forwards Ryan O’Rielly and Noel Acciari head to Toronto in a three-way trade with the St. Louis Blues and Minnesota Wild.
O’Reilly is certainly a top-six forward that can help the Maple Leafs. The Blues captain won a Stanley Cup with the club in 2019. He has 12 goals and seven assists in 40 games this season. The 32-year-old is coming off one of his worst seasons from an offensive standpoint. He recently came off a foot injury.
He is a rental in every sense of the word. O’Reilly will become an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season.
Acciari was in his first season with the Blues organization. He has 10 goals and eight assists in 54 games this season.
The 31-year-old Acciari is also an unrestricted free agent at the end of the season.
Getting the two veteran players came at a price when it comes to draft picks. The Leafs did surrender their first-round pick in the 2023 NHL Draft, Ottawa’s third-round pick in 2023 (acquired in the Matt Murray deal) and their second-round pick in 2024. The Wild received Toronto’s fourth-round pick in 2025.
The Wild is part of the trade to act as a broker to get O’Rielly’s salary cap hit down to 25 percent. O’Reilly will carry a cap charge of just $1.875 million.
The Leafs also sent forward Adam Gaudette and prospect Mikhail Abramov. Toronto did well in that regard as they managed to keep many of their much-talked-about prospects away from this trade (including University of Minnesota forward Matthew Knies).
Last week, Maple Leafs GM Kyle Dubas said he wasn’t targeting any of the big names or any of the rental players. But something changed. Perhaps it was the package of O’Reilly and Acciari that swayed the Leafs to give up more and go all in.
Toronto is very familiar with Acciari as the forward has played in 14 playoff games against the Leafs while with the Boston Bruins during the 2018 and 2019 runs. He can play at center or right win and help the team’s depth as it looks for some stability on the bottom-six.
Dubas is scheduled to meet with reports on Saturday morning.
Heading into the final year of his contract, this season was going to be a big evaluation point for the GM after four straight years of falling in the opening round of the playoffs. Now he’s betting big.