When Daniel Winnik signed last summer with the Maple Leafs, he was expecting to help a playoff-bound team.
Turns out he will — in Pittsburgh.
The stumbling Maple Leafs continue to clear house as the trade deadline approaches, sending Winnik to the Penguins for forward Zach Sill, a second-round pick in 2016 and a fourth-round pick this summer.
“Very excited to be joining the Penguins!” Winnik tweeted. “Looking forward to having the opportunity to win a Cup. It was an honour to play for the Maple Leafs.”
More house cleaning trades are likely — David Booth and Olli Jokinen could be moved by the 3 p.m. Monday deadline — while bigger names like Dion Phaneuf and Phil Kessel might not get moved until the end of the season if at all.
“We’ll continue to talk to all teams about all the guys we have remaining,” said Leafs general manager Dave Nonis. “It’s not like our business is done. I think there’s a chance we do make other moves.
“But moving big names, or big players, is more difficult during the season. But if there is an opportunity to improve, then we would look to take advantage.”
Just like the Cody Franson trade last week, Nonis chose not to wait for a better deal on deadline day.
“You get a feel for what the market is,” said Nonis. “Pittsburgh was coming pretty hard the last 10 days or so. Their offer continued to improve over the last 48 hours. It was our feeling that the offer was very fair. We didn’t think it would get better than that, and you’re risking injury to the player and/or the team looking elsewhere.”
Within minutes of the Leafs-Penguins trade announcement, the Jets and Hurricanes announced a deal with Jiri Tlusty — another pending free agent — going to Winnipeg for two draft picks, a third-rounder and a conditional fifth or sixth.
The return may not seem that grand for Winnik, who won over Toronto fans with his continued hard work. But it does seem a tad higher than what Carolina got for Tlusty. Both he and Winnik are unrestricted free agent wingers, Tlusty more of a scorer, Winnik a checker.
“He played well from the get-go,” Nonis said of Winnik. “He came here and did everything we asked of him to do. He fit in well with every line he played on. He was a good penalty killer for us and teams recognized that.”
Sill is a pending unrestricted free agent. The 26-year-old from Nova Scotia has one goal, two assists and 60 penalty minutes in 42 games for Pittsburgh.
The Leafs needed to take Sill, a role player with a $550,000 (U.S.) annual salary while also retaining half of Winnik’s remaining payments on his $1.3 million deal so the Penguins could fit Winnik under the salary cap.
Sill will get a chance to play more with the Leafs than he did with the Penguins, and the draft picks speak more to the team’s new philosophy of a patient rebuild. Those picks won’t be NHL-ready for another five years.
“He hasn’t played a large role in Pittsburgh,” Nonis said of Sill. “That coupled with the two picks, which are a big part of what we’re trying to do, trying to put more players in the system going forward. Once you get to an offer you think is right there isn’t reason to wait.”
The Leafs now have eight picks in the seven rounds of this year’s June draft, including two in the first and two in the fourth but none in the second.
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