It’s no secret that the Toronto Maple Leafs need to upgrade at right defence this off-season. Their weakness on that side of the ice was heavily exploited in the playoffs.



In Part 1 of this series on Wednesday, we looked at some of the biggest names the Leafs could target, either in free agency or through trades. Today, we’ll wrap it up with some more players who may not be household names but could still help.



The “defensive defencemen” – Radko Gudas and Mark Pysyk



Argument for acquiring Gudas/Pysyk:



The running joke online is that Radko Gudas is what coaches think Roman Polak is.



There’s a reason for the joke. Despite his physicality and “reckless behaviour” we’ll call it, Gudas is actually an extremely effective defenceman. Most players he’s compared to (ie. Polak) get stuck in their own end, racking up Hits and Blocked Shots because their team never has the puck. Unlike these...