If, when the Maple Leafs made their move with the Coyotes to clear Nick Ritchie’s cap hit and acquire Ryan Dzingel and Ilya Lyubushkin, you found yourself recognizing the former name and asking “who?” about the latter, you can be excused for that.
Dzingel is a former back-to-back 20-goal and 40-point player with the rival Senators. Lyubushkin is a 27-year-old who was never drafted, spent five seasons in the KHL before getting signed by Arizona, and has scored but one NHL goal and 19 NHL points (nine of which have come this season while paying 18:06 a night for the Coyotes).
And yet it’s Lyubushkin — and not Dzingel (who has since been claimed off waivers by San Jose) — who the Leafs appear intent to integrate into their group, potentially as early as Tuesday night, as part of a Leafs defence that now includes eight names and a third righty (the 6-foot-2, 208-pound Lyubushkin joins Timothy Liljegren, Justin Holl on the right).
His addition does raise natural questions though. Some, about whether this deal will precede another, and the cap maneuvering that will be required if it doesn’t and the Leafs want to carry eight defencemen, won’t be answered until after the March 21 trade deadline. But the most pressing questions, the ones that ask “where does he fit?” and “what should we expect?” can be answered with the help of video and data.
The data paints a picture of a defence-only defender who excels at preventing chances but grades out as a depth player on the whole because of a complete lack of offence. When understood within the context of the Coyotes and his partnership with Jakob Chychrun in Arizona this season, they paint a more vivid picture of a good defensive player on a bad defensive team. But they also, I’d argue (at least anecdotally) likely speak to Chychrun’s disappointing offensive season. Lyubushkin played 286 minutes at 5-on-5 with Chychrun in Arizona before the trade and just 94 minutes with his next most common partner, Cam Dineen. In those minutes, Chychrun (who had a breakout season playing alongside the more offensively capable Alex Goligoski last year) saw his offence dry up.
Here’s what Lyubushkin’s statistical profile looks like according to colleague Dom Luszczyszyn’s player cards.
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