NASHVILLE – Cody Franson was at a wedding when he received an unexpected phone call. Nashville Predators general manager David Poile was on the other line, delivering the young defenceman the news that he had just been dealt to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
“It was a shock but that’s a part of the game,” Franson said last week while reminiscing about the trade that went down over two years ago. “It’s a business and they had to do what they had to do.”
The trade came on July 3, 2011. As part of a way to shed Matthew Lombardi’s salary, the Predators included Franson in the trade to the Leafs that yielded Nashville two players: Brett Lebda and Robert Slaney. Lebda was bought out; Slaney is no longer in the organization.
While Lombardi has been injured off and on ever since signing with the Predators in 2010 (and moved on from Toronto to Phoenix, Anaheim and now Switzerland), the Leafs got abonafide steal in Franson.
The six-foot-five, lanky defenseman was a third-round pick of the Predators in 2005. Before arriving to Nashville, Franson was always thought of as a top prospect in the organization. Once he made it to the NHL, he showed flashes of his sky-high potential and was just 23 at the time of the trade. (Imagine if the already-talented Preds’ blue-line still had Franson.)
Now with the Leafs, Franson is looking like the defenceman the Predators always expected him to be.
Franson had a rough first season in Toronto with Ron Wilson as coach. But with Randy Carlyle calling the shots, Franson has blossomed. In the lockout-shortened season, Franson had 29 points in 45 games – nearly a 53-point pace over an 82-game season. He has four points through six games in this young season and helped the Leafs win a wild one on Saturday night, 6-5 over Edmonton.
“It’s been a great place to play,” Franson said of Toronto. “The pressure is fun to play in. Certain guys don’t like playing in that kind of pressure but I do. I find it a very fun place to play and I’ve really enjoyed my time here so far.”
The last two seasons haven’t been completely smooth for Franson, however. He has found himself in a couple contract disputes and has settled for one-year deals that have turned out to be major bargains for the Leafs. His latest contract saga ended in late September when he was an unsigned restricted free agent. He inked a one-year deal for $2 million – a stunning figure considering his importance to the Leafs’ defence corps.
When asked whether the contract situations have put pressure on him over the last couple years, Franson said, “the market alone puts pressure on you to perform. If you don’t perform there, everyone knows about it. That’s part of the territory. You want to be better than you were the last year every year and that’s the way I approach it. You always want to take steps forward and nothing going backwards. On one-year contracts it becomes more important.”
Franson is an integral part of Toronto’s blue-line, an opportunity he may not have gotten in Nashville if he had stayed. The Preds’ defence features three top-pair worthy defencemen in Shea Weber, Seth Jones and Roman Josi. In Toronto, Franson has seen his ice time increase rapidly year to year, going from 16:11 to 18:47, now to 22:27 in this young season.
The 26-year-old defenceman is also growing into a leader in the locker room. Morgan Rielly mentioned that Franson has been a mentor for the young players on the team, including himself.
“He’s a great guy off the ice and that helps us on the ice,” said Rielly, who made the team out of training camp as a 19-year-old. “He’s always talking in the room, always taking care of us. I know personally he’s been great to me; we’ve had a chance to play together. He’s been a great leader for me. He’s been really helpful.”
Similarly, Franson had someone take him under his wing when he was a youngster in Nashville – except it was someone he had known his whole life.
Franson grew up three doors down from Weber in Sicamous, B.C., abd was the same age as Shea’s brother, Brandon, when he played hockey with him as a kid. The two families are close friends and Weber is someone Franson has always looked up to.
“He was doing what I wanted to do,” Franson explained. “He went and played for the Kelowna Rockets when I wanted to play in the WHL. He played in the world juniors when I wanted to play in the world juniors. He was always doing the same exact thing I wanted to do and was always a guy I could talk to about those things when it came time for me to be able to do that kind of stuff. He’s always been there for me, he’s a great friend, he took me under his wing when I first started. I can’t thank him enough for that.”
Getting traded from Nashville to Toronto was ironic for Franson. His first baby pictures were of him in a Leafs jersey. As a kid, they were his team. Now he gets to wear that classic blue and white sweater for a living.
“As surprising as it was when I got traded, you deal with a bunch of different emotions. You don’t see it coming,” he said. “It’s tough to swallow at first but then you start letting the fact that you’re going to Toronto sink in. I grew up a fan of them so it’s kind of a dream come true.
“It was just one of those things where something happened where you’re not too sure about, but at the end of the day it worked out well.”
