Leafs wave Dzingel immediately after trading for him.

The Toronto Maple Leafs may not have been all that interested in acquiring Ryan Dzingel when they traded for him on Saturday night.

According to a report from David Amber, the Leafs are sending Ryan Dzingel to waivers on Sunday in spite of the fact that they traded for him less than 24 hours ago. Sheldon Keefe reportedly confirmed that the plan is to assign Dzingel to the Toronto Marlies, the American Hockey League affiliate team of the Maple Leafs, assuming of course that Dzingel clears the waiver process without being claimed.

This reveals a few things about the trade the Leafs made on Saturday night. The first and most obvious is that Dzingel was never their target and more likely was just a way to even out the money going to the Arizona Coyotes when they sent veteran forward Nick Ritchie back the other way. Dzingel carries a cap hit of $1.1 million and the other player acquired by the Leafs in the deal, defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin, carries a cap hit of $1.35 million which when combined together comes very close to the cap hit of  $2.5 million on Ritchie's contract.

The other is that either Lyubushkin was their true target all along, or that their only objective in this trade was getting rid of Ritchie's cap hit of $2.5 million for both this season and the next. They could have chosen to bury Lyubushkin's cap hit in the minors as well but have not opted to do so which suggests to me that they do intend to use the defenseman in their lineup, at least for now.

The Leafs were not the only team active on waivers today with both the Ottawa Senators and the aforementioned Arizona Coyotes also each waiving a player. The Senators have placed forward Clark Bishop on waivers and the Coyotes have placed veteran goaltender Carter Hutton on waivers.

Bishop has played 9 NHL games this season for the Senators with no goals and just 1 assist to his name and currently carries a cap hit of $800,000. He's likely headed back to the AHL's Belleville Senators should he clear.

Hutton on the other hand has quite frankly looked horrible over 3 games with the Arizona Coyotes, recording a 7.76 goals against average and a .741 save percentage over that stretch. It seems extremely unlikely that there's any chance he gets claimed.