Toronto Maple Leafs Continue To Purge Previous Regime With Latest Trade

Taylor Beck
Photo by John Russell/NHLI via Getty Images

The Toronto Maple Leafs‘ management team of Brendan Shanahan, Mark Hunter and Kyle Dubas are continuing to reshape their roster, since their fall from grace last season. On Sunday, they traded another piece from the old Brian Burke and Dave Nonis regime by dealing Jamie Devane to the Nashville Predators for Taylor Beck. If you were to look at the statistics of each of these players, there are very few changes to their roster of either team pro or con.

Devane heads to Nashville to join the Preds with only two NHL games under his belt for the Leafs in the 2013-14 season. He’s hardly a scoring threat. Last season he played in 39 games with the Leafs’ minor league team, the Toronto Marlies, collecting two assists. However, he heads to Nashville with an opportunity to crack the lineup.

Beck comes to Toronto after a 16-point season last year with eight goals and eight assists. He is a local Ontario boy and probably would love to play for the team he used to watch. Beck comes to Canada after playing 62 games last fall. His best game came on Nov. 18, 2014. The Preds won 9-2 over Toronto and Beck had a three-point game. Beck is not known for putting pucks in the back of the net, but it seemed to be different on the Air Canada Centre ice.

At the end of last season, Beck became a restricted free agent. The Preds did present him with a qualifying offer to retain his rights, and he filed for salary arbitration on July 5, 2015. A week later he was traded to Toronto.

Beck and Devane are both 24 years old, with Devane slightly older by three months. Former Leafs GM Burke drafted Devane No. 68 overall in the third round of the 2009 NHL Draft. Beck was drafted No. 70 overall in the third round of the same draft by the Predators.

It is another small victory for the Leafs as the team begins to be molded in the way Shanahan and Mike Babcock want to see.

Share On FacebookShare StumbleUpon