One Year Later: The Second Ilya Lyubushkin Trade

By Michael Walters

One year ago, the Anaheim Ducks traded defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin to the Toronto Maple Leafs for a 2025 third round draft pick. The Ducks retained half of Lyubushkin’s salary. The Carolina Hurricanes were also involved, as they retained a quarter of Lyubushkin’s salary and received a 2024 sixth round draft pick from Toronto.

The Ducks had acquired Lyubushkin the previous August, getting him from the Buffalo Sabres for a 2025 fourth round draft pick. He played in 55 games for the Ducks and recorded four assists. Lyubushkin was brought in to help shore up a weak defensive core, but wasn’t able to do that. He played an average of 17:09 a night, the second highest amount of average ice time in his career. Most years Lyubushkin has averaged playing around 15 or 16 minutes a night. Lyubushkin wasn’t bad with the Ducks, but he didn’t improve the team through his play in any significant way. However, there was one aspect of his time in Anaheim that is invaluable and can never truly be measured. For much of his time in Anaheim, Lyubushkin played next to Pavel Mintyukov and helped mentor the rookie. The two played well together and there’s little doubt that Lyubushkin helped Mintyukov’s development along.

The Maple Leafs were looking to shore up their defense with a right-handed shooting defenseman. Lyubushkin wasn’t going to fix all of their problems, but he represented an upgrade for them. He had previously played with Toronto during the end of the 2021-2022 season, so the team was familiar with what he brought to the table, and that familiarity was one of the reasons why the Leafs wanted to bring him back.

With Toronto, Lyubushkin played in 19 games to end the year and recorded four assists, matching what he did with the Ducks. He played in all seven games of Toronto’s first round loss to the Boston Bruins, recording three assists and finishing with a +4 rating. He was tied with Morgan Reilly in assists and points by a defensemen for the Maple Leafs and led the team in plus-minus. Ilya Lyubushkin did not re-sign with Toronto after the season ended; instead, he signed a three-year deal with Dallas.

The Ducks will use the third round pick they acquired from Toronto this summer. After trading away a second round pick in the Cutter Gauthier trade in January, it was important for the Ducks to get another pick in 2025 in a deal they made near the deadline. While the 2025 draft isn’t being viewed as a particularly deep draft, there will be future NHL players taken in the third round or later. The Ducks have a number of recent third round picks currently playing in San Diego, like Sasha Pastujov, Tyson Hinds, and Yegor Sidorov. Lukas Dostal is a former third round pick as well.

With their sixth round pick in 2024, the Carolina Hurricanes selected defenseman Roman Shokhrin from the MHL. He’s already set a career high in assists and points this season, and likely will in goals as well.

A year later, all three teams involved can be pretty happy with this trade. The Ducks acquired Lyubushkin for a fourth round pick, so upgrading that by a round makes this an automatic win for Anaheim. While Lyubushkin’s acquisition wasn’t enough to get Toronto past Boston, he did about as much as they could have hoped for him in that series. And Carolina was able to get another defensive prospect by retaining part of Lyubushkin’s cap hit. This likely won’t be a trade that will ever be looked back on as transformative for any of these three teams, but all three can be satisfied with getting good value at the time.

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March 1st, 2025