An interesting development took place Monday’s practice that has many wondering if Timothy Liljegren has fallen out of favour with the Maple Leafs.

One of the many moves that the Maple Leafs orchestrated this summer to bolster their back end was extending Liljegren to a 2-year contract. The former first round pick has yet to take the leap that the organization has been waiting for. However, they saw enough potential to hand him an extension, so it’s tough to say where he stands.

Brad Treliving was far from satisfied with his blueline, but after acquiring Chris Tanev, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and Jani Hakanpaa, the outlook is certainly better than it was at the start of the off-season.

The Hakanpaa deal took several months to iron out due to rising concerns over a knee injury, but the hulking defenseman is expected to return to return at some point in the early goings of the regular season.

At Monday’s practice, the defensive pairings showed that Liljegren could open the season in the press box or on the trading block. Morgan Rielly was skating alongside Tanev at the top, Ekman-Larsson was next to Jake McCabe, and Simon Benoit was paired up with Conor Timmins — presumably a placeholder for Hakanpaa. Liljegren was on the “fourth pair” with Marshall Rifai and that’s never a good sign in the late stages of training camp.

To add fuel to the fire, The Athletic’s James Mirtle added that if Hakanpaa is indeed healthy enough to play, the Maple Leafs will not only supplant Liljegren in exchange for the big Fin in the lineup, but they might also look to move the Swedish defenseman as he carries a cap hit of $3 million with most of it already paid out though a front-loaded bonus.
“I also wonder if Hakanpaa is truly healthy to play every night by November if they might revisit moving Timothy Liljegren’s $3 million cap hit. There was a ton of smoke around potentially moving him around the draft in Las Vegas back in late June, and the contract he ultimately signed was very heavily frontloaded, with 40 percent of the two-year deal already paid out in a signing bonus on July 1 before he played a game on it.”
 

As Mirtle points out, the Maple Leafs have already looked into trading Liljegren and could very well revisit those talks in the coming days and weeks, depending on Hakanpaa’s situation. However, it’s also very important for Liljegren to mesh with Craig Berube’s system, otherwise a trade could be expedited in short order if he can’t keep up:
“That should make Liljegren very easy to move if he doesn’t mesh with Berube’s radically different north-south system early in the year. It’s a trade that would make more sense than keeping a $3 million seventh defenseman around and creating all kinds of cap headaches later in the season.”
There’s never a dull moment in Leafs Nation and the once highly touted defenseman has found himself on the outside looking in. New coaching chance, front office philosophy, and new defensive counterparts have completely shifted his chances of remaining a member of the Maple Leafs by season’s end.