Yes, it's true. The Leafs have sent Carl Gunnarsson AND the 94th overall pick to the St. Louis Blues for Roman Polak. Whatever goodwill Dave Nonis garnered over the past 24 hours is now gone, and we can only hope that he is fired soon.
Polak is older than Gunnarsson, about $350k cheaper, and struggled with softer competition on St. Louis' bottom pair.
Here is his HockeyDB page. Here is his Capgeek page. Here is a look at his numbers at BtN.
UPDATE: It gets worse.
Leafs retained $200,000 of cap hit in Polak-Gunnarsson deal
— Pierre LeBrun (@Real_ESPNLeBrun) June 28, 2014 I'll turn to Twitter for initial reaction and add further analysis later:
Polka was second-unit penalty killer for 2nd ranked St. Louis PK last season. Leafs were third-worst. Polak probably aims to address that.
— Jonas Siegel (@jonasTSN1050) June 28, 2014 Recent NHL trades in a player usage chart pic.twitter.com/ZxakTLhDt9
— Rob Vollman (@robvollmanNHL) June 28, 2014 I recall the #Leafs moved Steen and Cola to STL for Stempniak to get a RH shot on the PP. That worked out well.
— Michael Forbes (@mforbes37) June 28, 2014 Let’s all remember Gunnarsson broke even against top comp pre Carlyle. Maybe his hip is never going to be OK. Maybe it’s mostly Carlyle.
— 67Sound (@67sound) June 28, 2014