Curious to know if your opinion has changed in regards to Kapanen slotting next to Matthews now that Nylander wants a big contract. He played well against chi, although a very small sample. I feel like the first 3 games has really emphasised the need for serviceable top 4 defence. Especially considering theres a good chance Gardiner is leaving on the open market.
Both yes and no. Long answer incoming.
The need for a top 4 RD is great, I even said during the summer that not getting one would be a significant disadvantage to our chances. Hainsey just doesn't cut it. So I still think we should acquire one.
The question is still how; sending a top end asset for a known quantity is the easiest, but I don't think it's the best. Let's say that Kapanen can perform well enough with Matthews to avoid the drop in performance that we saw when he was flanked with Hyman and Brown. That makes Willy less crucial, but he is still an incredible asset. In my opinion, Willy is a top 10 RW. The only reason both he and Marner is not already viewed as such is because they have not been put into the same kind of minutes as their peers. That opinion got supported recently as they were ranked as #9 and #8 respectively in Andrew Berkshire's immense statistical evaluation project. He also pointed out that Willy would be several steps higher if it wasn't for that first half-season on a last place Leafs team.
So even though he is no longer crucial, we're still dealing with an elite talent, so we can just get any kind of complementary RD back. That would just be our own lesser version of the Hall trade, giving up way too much to (barely) address a need. So we need a comparable talent back, and that kind of talent on the back end is pretty much never available. Jones was, but that was some extreme circumstances. Some view Hamilton as that kind of talent, so it's still possible to see one available. It's the kind of thing that you can't plan for, or in any way expect. It just happens.
So our plan for acquiring such a RD will have to be in a different way. Let's go through RD options, that is players good enough even if they aren't a great fit, around the league and see how they were acquired:
Manson - Late draft pick
Montour - Mid draft pick
McAvoy - Early draft pick
Dahlin - 1st overall
Ristolainen - Early draft pick
Brodie - Late draft pick
Hamilton - Traded for perceived similar talent
Faulk - Mid draft pick
Pesce - Mid draft pick
Johnson - 1st overall
Jones - Traded for believed #1C
Larsson - Traded for franchise winger
Ekblad - 1st overall
Doughty - 2nd overall
Spurgeon - UFA prospect
Dumba - Early draft pick
Petry - Traded for cheap
Subban - Traded for believed equal #1D
Ellis - Early draft pick
Vatanen - Traded for believed equal center
Boychuk - UFA
Shattenkirk - UFA
Gostisbehere - Mid draft pick
Letang - Mid draft pick
Schultz - Reclamation project
Karlsson - Traded in extreme circumstances
Burns - Traded for three perceived good assets
Pietrangelo - 4th overall
Parayko - Mid draft pick
Strålman - UFA
Sergachev - Traded for perceived equal talent
Tanev - UFA prospect
McNabb - Expansion draft
Miller - Expansion draft
Carlson - Early draft pick
Niskanen - UFA
Trouba - Early draft pick
Byfuglien - Special circumstances
There's not a whole lot of comparables here that were just to go out and get. What this tells us is that we should look at draft and development, free agency, and if all things fail, we should acquire a forward from a team in a cap squeeze, put him as a d-man and watch him become one of the most unique players in modern NHL history.
The traded for guys here consist of:
Hamilton - The closest we get to a comparable is trading Rielly for a RD, or trading Sandin for a RD prospect.
Jones - Top end talent stuck behind elite depth, cost a player with value similar to Willy.
Larsson - One of the worst trades of the last decade.
Petry - Kind of a reclamation project that was much better than he was able to show, was acquired cheap.
Subban - We don't have Weber.
Vatanen - Barely good enough to really change things. Traded for an asset of a value that we don't quite have. We have much better, or worse.
Karlsson - Kind of doubt we see similar circumstances again for many, many years.
Burns - Interesting case. Burns was a controversial player that they got for three good assets in a trade that turned out much, much better than expected. File under "hidden value."
Sergachev - The avenue of getting a top end prospect by giving up another top end prospect. Issue here is that the top end prospect we have to give up is actually the one we want to get, Liljegren.
So basically, unless we have an elite talent stuck on a team where he'll never get a good chance, Nylander as a trade doesn't make sense. So we keep him, get his price tag down, and if Kapanen works out as well as the Chicago game hinted, we use him to give Kadri a playmate and make us even more impossible to deal with offensively. The RD acquisition has to come from elsewhere.
Edit: Oh, and speaking of Gardiner. I don't think we really need to worry. If you look at guys who have made the best cases to deserve top four minutes, we have two of them in Dermott and Borgman. Dermott was a dominant #3LD last season, and Borgman had an almost as impressive individual profile.