Pierre McGuire reveals a major controversy involving a Maple Leafs defenseman

Darren Raddysh has a new address this season, and the Toronto Maple Leafs are getting a defenseman coming off a career year.

The blue liner landed in Toronto this summer after wrapping up his run with the Tampa Bay Lightning on a career high.

Raddysh played 73 games with Tampa Bay last season, putting up 22 goals and 48 assists for 70 points from the back end.

Ten of those goals came on the power play, and he tacked on 16 more helpers with the man advantage.

He also finished a plus-21 and scored six game-winning goals, numbers that read more like a top-four forward than a third-pair defenseman.

Raddysh added a goal and an assist across seven playoff games with Tampa Bay in the spring before this summer's move.

So why wasn't that name bigger outside Florida? Pierre McGuire raised it on the Toronto Sports Rush Podcast earlier this week.

McGuire didn't hold back. Raddysh, he said, should be in that top 20 of the best NHL defensemen list, there's no question about that.

He framed it as a visibility problem more than a performance one, pointing out how few people actually watched Tampa Bay's games.

''Darren Raddysh didn't grow his brand on people because a lot of people didn't watch Tampa play. [...] But Darren Raddysh should be in that top 20 list, there's no question about that.''

Toronto's rough finish makes this swing bigger

Toronto is walking into this addition off a difficult stretch, finishing 32-36-14 for 78 points a season ago.

The Maple Leafs ranked 28th overall and closed the year on a seven-game losing streak, going 2-7-1 over their final 10 games.

Jim Hiller took over behind Toronto's bench this summer as well, meaning Raddysh arrives into a program that's rebuilding more than one part of the roster at once.

At a cap hit of 975,000 dollars, Raddysh costs less than a tenth of what Auston Matthews earns on that same roster.

For a team that struggled to generate offense from the back end, that kind of price tag on a 70-point season is either a steal or a footnote by December.

Toronto still needs a legitimate top-four partner next to him, but if those power play numbers travel north with him, this quietly becomes one of the summer's better value additions.