I wonder what the pressure point is in Toronto these days.

Obviously when you have a guy like Auston Matthews who's felt, for most of his career, like one of the all-time great goalscorers and 200-foot forwards in the league, there's always pressure to win. Add in the other members of the Core Four (which isn't really seen as either core or, certainly, four at this point), all their ages, and all the money they've made, and it's fair to say that this is the Leafs team with the most expectation on it in, what, a few decades? More?

So: Why aren't they acting like it?

There isn’t a move they've made this summer is aligned in a way that says to me they have any particular interest in competing for a Stanley Cup with Matthews. They hire John Chayka, the Wendy's Guy, to run the team after several years out of the sport. Not what I would have done, but okay, you can kinda see the logic if you think he's gonna whip up the best Grok prompts. You hire Jim Hiller to be the coach, even though his teams were middling and certainly not the most offensively minded in Los Angeles, but okay you can kinda see the logic because the underlying numbers there were all really good. And now you do a sign-and-trade for a guy basically every "advanced stats person" in the sport was saying was a perfectly good player but someone was going to overpay him dramatically coming off a completely unrepeatable 20-goal season.

There's no denying that Darren Raddysh is a good NHL defenseman, nor that he was the best one hitting the UFA market this summer. But the idea that he will necessarily boost the Leafs' league-average power play from last season or provide much value beyond being a solid second-pairing offensive option seems a bit of a reach to me. The $8-million price tag is one of those "My brain has not adjusted to the salary cap being $104 million" things, so I got over the sticker shock quickly, but near-complete control of any future trade destinations and a near-buyout-proof contract for eight years? Ehhhhhhhhhhh. Would not be what I chose, personally; it's one of those opportunity cost things where you can probably spend $8 million a little more efficiently, but also have you seen this UFA class? All of which is to say: I get it, but I'm frowning at it.