As suggested earlier this week, the San Jose Sharks have taken a shot at a young, puck-moving, right-side defenseman looking for a new start. Today, San Jose Sharks General Manager Mike Grier announced that he traded Matt Benning, a 2025 third-round pick and a 2026 sixth-round pick to the Toronto Maple Leafs for Timothy Liljegren.
Fear the Fin explored what Liljegren could bring to the team in this previous post. The 25-year-old defenseman appeared in 55 games for the Maple Leafs last season and averaged 19:40 of ice time. He scored just under a half point per game, finishing the season with 23 points. According to the Sharks news release, Liljegren also finished fourth on the Maple Leafs with 116 blocked shots and eighth on the team in power play ice time.
Swapping Liljegren for Benning
In terms of roster players, Liljegren could make the ice time distribution for the Sharks a little more even. Last night, Benning had 11:54 of total ice time. That’s not exactly what you’re looking for from a defenseman, even one on the third pairing.
Liljegren is also an offensive upgrade to Benning. In his best season, the 2022-23 season with the Sharks, Benning had 24 points in 77 games. That’s just one point better than Liljegren’s career-high achieved last season.
This season, Benning has zero points in five games. Liljegren has zero points in one game.
The picks
The Sharks also traded two picks to sweeten the deal for Toronto. The 2026 sixth-round pick is straight-forward. If the Sharks do not drastically improve next season, it will be somewhere between 161 and 170 in the 2026 draft. While you can sometimes find a diamond in the rough around that draft slot, it’s a lot of luck.
The 2025 conditional third-round pick is a little tougher. The Sharks don’t have the team’s own 2025 third-round pick; it was traded to the Vegas Golden Knights along with Tomas Hertl. However, the Sharks did have two third-round picks from previous trades. San Jose acquired Edmonton’s 2025 third-round pick in the trade for Cody Ceci and it acquired Colorado’s 2025 third-round pick in the trade with the Nashville Predators for Yaroslav Askarov.
As part of the trade, the Maple Leafs will receive whichever of the picks is higher on draft day.
Where could Liljegren slot into the Sharks lineup?
Both Benning and Liljegren are right-shot defensemen, so it’s a one for trade by that sense. Since the Sharks don’t have cap issues, fitting Liljegren’s extra cap hit won’t be a problem.
Ideally, this could mean that Jan Rutta slides further down the depth chart, making our top four defensemen a bit more formidable. The defensive pairings could look something like this:
Jake Walman – Cody Ceci
Mario Ferraro – Timothy Liljegren
Henry Thrun – Jan Rutta
I didn’t like the Thrun-Rutta pairing last season, but maybe if they’re getting limited minutes, that will help. The one downside is that this does not give Jack Thompson the ability to truly gain some footing in the NHL and that could be to the detriment of the player and the team.
That said, Rutta is in the final year of his contract and could end up being traded before the deadline. The same goes for Cody Ceci, whose contract also expires at the end of the season.
