Blackhawks d-man Johnny Oduya is a pending UFA and with the new contracts to Toews and Kane coming into play starting next season it's not likely the Hawks will resign the Swede. That means he'll be up for grabs.
The Leafs should go after him. Hard.
He was a FANTASTIC pick-up by the Hawks back in 2012 and really helped them out in their Cup run in 2013. He's not going to put up many points, but that's because he's a defence-first defenceman. He's going to log solid minutes 5 on 5 and on the PK. You could use him on the second powerplay unit, but he probably won't help much there.
The pairing of Oduya and Hjalmarsson, in my opinion, has been one of the best pairings in the NHL in the past few years. They've been a premiere shut-down pairing that's been relatively hidden behind the powerhouse pairing (and in my opinion the best D pairing in the world) Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook.
Oduya has a solid +/- rating of +20 over the parts of 4 seasons he's played in Chicago and is a career +47 (which includes parts of three seasons with a bad Atlanta Thrashers/ Winnipeg Jets team).
The reason the Leafs need to go after him is because he would fill a huge hole in the Leafs defence core. The Leafs core of regular NHL defencemen is Phaneuf, Franson, Polak, Rielly, Gardiner, Robidas. The one thing they all have in common: they're more offensive then defensive. Johnny Oduya would provide a much-needed man always back and worried about defence.
Oduya currently has a cap hit of $3.38 million (salary of just under $3 million) and I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't get much of a pay raise.
If the Leafs have the cap space and can sign him for under $3.5 million (ideally under $3 million but that probably won't happen; it's free agency. Everyone is overpaid.) then there isn't any reason why they shouldn't do everything they can to sign him.
The Leafs need a defensive d-man, and he's the best bang-for-your-buck that you'll find in the 2015 free-agents.
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