Fraser Minten’s new seven-year, $50.4 million extension in Boston has thrown a fresh spotlight on one of the Maple Leafs’ most painful recent misfires: the March 2025 trade for Brandon Carlo.
Minten’s rise is what makes the deal sting even more. After a strong first NHL season that produced 35 points and cemented him as an NHL center, the Bruins locked him up long term. Toronto, meanwhile, is left staring at a trade that already looked ugly and may get worse before it gets better - or, at least, before all the pieces of the trade tree fully unfold.
At the time, the Leafs were betting on a veteran defenseman with size, experience and term. Carlo fit the profile of the kind of player a team in win-now mode goes after: a right-shot blue liner who could handle the defensive end, kill penalties and bring some physicality. Toronto was trying to chase the Florida Panthers, and on paper that kind of move made sense.
But Carlo’s reputation had outpaced his actual impact for a while, and his game had been slipping before the trade ever happened. He still had the tools to get sticks in lanes and protect the front of the net, but the mobility that once made him effective wasn’t there like it used to be.
Add in the fact that he brought virtually no offensive upside and struggled even with basic puck management, and the fit in Toronto turned sour fast. Eventually, the Leafs moved him to the St.
Louis Blues for two third-round picks.
That return looks especially brutal when measured against what Toronto gave up to get him just a year and a half earlier: Minten, a 2026 first-round pick and a 2025 fourth-round pick. Minten alone would have made the deal look bad in hindsight. Including those picks pushes it into a completely different category.
Carlo’s season in Toronto was a mixed bag at best and a mess at worst. He played 55 games, averaged more than 19 minutes a night and finished with seven assists.
The underlying numbers were rough, with the Leafs struggling to control play when he was on the ice. Toronto did start nearly 60% of his shifts in the defensive zone, which naturally puts a defenseman in a tough spot, but that was part of the job the Leafs thought they were buying.
Minten, for his part, was never viewed as a sure-fire star when Toronto dealt him. A second-round pick in 2022 at No. 38 overall, he was a good prospect, not a can’t-miss one.
He had played just 19 NHL games and scored four points before the trade. Toronto clearly believed he would take time to become an everyday player, while Carlo was supposed to help right away.
Boston, though, saw enough in Minten to move quickly, and the fact that he’s already become a real NHL center makes the Leafs’ miss look even sharper.
That’s the reality of deadline deals built around urgency. Teams chasing a window often pay for present help with future value, and sometimes the future arrives sooner than expected.
Toronto has made that kind of bet over and over during the Brendan Shanahan era and beyond, trading prospects, picks, depth and cheap young players in the name of winning now. Sometimes that’s what contenders do.
For the Leafs, it has too often ended with the wrong player flourishing somewhere else.
This one is likely to land most heavily on former GM Brad Treliving, and depending on where that first-round pick ends up, the trade could become a major part of his Toronto legacy. If Minten never becomes a 40-plus point player, Boston could eventually have its own regrets about the extension. But given the rising salary cap and Minten’s trajectory, that feels like a long shot.
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