The Unfortunate History of Toronto Maple Leafs Goaltending Decisions
The Toronto Maple Leafs have shipped another backup goaltender out of town. The team doesn’t have a positive history of goalie decisions.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have made three individual goaltending moves this offseason. The team signed Michal Neuvirth to a professional tryout and Michael Hutchinson to a one-year contract. They also traded Garret Sparks to the Las Vegas Golden Knights. The moves will culminate in Neuvirth and Hutchinson battling for the backup position.
The hope is that sending Sparks to the desert in exchange for David Clarkson for the benefit of cap space, has not set the team back. The Leafs have an unfortunate history of poor decisions when it comes to roster decisions with their goaltenders.
By moving Sparks with such a limited return, it means that the Leafs have determined that he was not going to ascend to be anointed as the team’s starter of the future. It’s a calculated gamble that has been made in the past and failed.
The timing is curious because Sparks was the man that management chose to remain with the Maple Leafs. In doing so, they allowed Curtis McElhinney to be claimed off waivers. McElhinney went on to have a great year with the Carolina Hurricanes and leveraged that to sign a two-year contract with the Lightning.
In retrospect, the Toronto Maple Leafs decision to keep Sparks over McElhinney did not work out, but it’s hard to fault them for choosing the 25 year old reigning AHL goalie of the year over the aging career back-up.
Sparks owned a 3.15 goals against average and a save percentage of 0.902. McElhinney won 20 of the 33 games he played. He had a 2.58 goals against average and a 0.912 save percentage. (Hockeydb.com)
Perhaps this latest set of goaltender transactions works out. It has been a long time since the Leafs guessed correctly with their goalies. We will look back on some of the Leafs biggest blunders.
Andrew Raycroft
Warning: This is going to be painful.
If you aren’t familiar with the Leafs acquisition of Andrew Raycroft, congratulations, you have probably been sleeping well. On June 24, 2006, the Maple Leafs General Manager, John Ferguson Jr. pulled the trigger on what may be the worst trade in team history.
The Leafs had two very promising young goalies in their system, Justin Pogge and Tuukka Rask. There was no need to keep both of them so a decision was made to send one to the Boston Bruins in exchange for the former Calder Memorial Trophy winner, Raycroft.
This misstep is only made worse with the knowledge that the Bruins were planning to release Raycroft that off-season if they were unable to find a trading partner. That would have allowed Toronto to have signed their man without giving up a future star.
It has also since been discovered that the Bruins would have been willing to make the deal for Pogge instead of Rask. As it turned out, Peter Chiarelli, who had one month of experience as the general manager, fleeced the Leafs.
Raycroft lasted just two seasons with the Buds. He played 72 games in the 2006-07 season and 19 the following year. Then, two years to the day of that terrible trade, the Leafs placed Raycroft on waivers and later bought out the remainder of his contract.
Meanwhile, Pogge continued his development with the Leafs AHL affiliate, the Toronto Marlies. His AHL numbers were all underwhelming though he did get an opportunity in the NHL. He was trusted in net for seven games and even won one of those contests.
Rask has since gone on to play 488 more NHL games than Pogge. In that span, he has been named an NHL All-Star, won a Vezina Trophy, and a Stanley Cup. He also owns the Bruins franchise records for having played the most games as a goalie and earned the most franchise wins.
Vesa Toskala
In the spring of 2007, the Maple Leafs had their eye on the promising backup goaltender with the San Jose Sharks. Vesa Toskala had beat out Miikka Kiprusoff to backup Evgeni Nabokov a few years earlier and had proven himself to be a player capable of taking on a greater workload.
Ferguson Jr. decided the best course of action was to make the 30-year-old goalie a Leaf. During the entry draft that June, Ferguson Jr. and Sharks general manager, Doug Wilson, worked out a deal to make that happen. One year after trading for Raycroft, the team wanted Toskala to take over.
The Toronto Maple Leafs sent their 2007 second-round pick, 2009 fourth-round pick, and 2007 conditional first-round pick in exchange for Toskala and Mark Bell. The Sharks used that package to move up in the draft, sending it to the St. Louis Blues for the ninth pick, which they used to select Logan Couture.
The Leafs original slot saw Lars Eller go to the Blues. There is no doubt that if given the opportunity to revise history, the Leafs would void the trade with San Jose and move their pick package to get Couture for themselves.
With Toronto, Toskala never lived up to the hype. He was given every opportunity to succeed, but posted lacklustre numbers.
He played a total of 145 games with the franchise and owned a goals against average of 3.08 and a save percentage of 0.894. His worst number came on March 18, 2008. That’s when Toskala allowed a 197-foot shot to beat him.
The Chance at John Tavares
Brian Burke’s tenure with the Toronto Maple Leafs had some believing that he was the worst general manager in team history. While he had some fine moments, he did make a few moves that turned out to be counterproductive. One such action took place in March of 2009.
At the time, the Leafs were 11th in the Eastern Conference and nine points out of a playoff spot. Burke had a decision to make, he could have either continued to allow the Leafs to trend in a direction where they would be selecting higher in a stacked draft class or attempt to leapfrog three teams and qualify for the playoffs. At the time, the team’s star defenceman, Thomas Kaberle was nursing a hand injury. It meant that the Leafs chances to make the playoffs were grim.
Burke countered conventional wisdom and refused to allow the team to sink to the bottom of the league. He was active at the trade deadline and claimed keeper Martin Gerber off waivers from the Ottawa Senators. The move signaled Toskala being shut down for the season with a hip injury.
By picking up Gerber, the Leafs improved, pushing them into a less favourable draft and lottery position. It wasn’t close to enough to get them into the playoffs. Burke’s gamble seriously backfired.
Without adding Gerber, Toronto would likely have finished with the fourth-worst record in the NHL. With him, the season ended with them as the seventh-worst. With John Tavares waiting to be drafted, having a higher percentage to win the draft lottery would have been a benefit.
There was a stacked draft class that year as well. The Maple Leafs selected Nazem Kadri, Tavares’s London Knights teammate, in the seventh spot. There were excellent players available between those two picks. In 2009 they came off the board in the following order:
- John Tavares (NYI)
- Victor Hedman (TBL)
- Matt Duchene (COL)
- Evander Kane (ATL)
- Brayden Schenn (LAK)
- Oliver Ekman-Larsson (PHX)
- Nazem Kadri (TOR)
There’s no way to know how things would have played out if the Toronto Maple Leafs had a higher selection, but with the opportunity to have brought a franchise player like Tavares into the fold as a rookie would have changed the entire history of the team. All it would have taken was to let another team claim Gerber.
Grant Fuhr
Ill-advised trades can sink a team. The impact can be felt for years.
Such was the case surrounding an exchange headed by GM, Cliff Fletcher, on September 19, 1991. He pulled the trigger on a blockbuster seven-player deal with the Edmonton Oilers.
This was a massive deal that scored the Toronto Maple Leafs established veteran players, including two Hall of Famers, Glenn Anderson and Grant Fuhr. The problem for Toronto was the timing of the acquisitions. They got Fuhr and Anderson on the latter halves of their careers.
Fuhr joined the Leafs at age 29 and played 95 games for the franchise. It resulted in 38 wins, 42 losses, and nine ties. His time with the Buds hurt his career numbers. Over the two seasons he spent with the team, he had a save percentage of 0.885 and a goals against average of 3.50.
Going the other way was a player who was about to figure things out. Vincent Damphousse was just 23-years-old at the time of the trade. It was a stark contrast to the best player the Leafs acquired, Anderson. At age 30, he was far removed from being a 100-point player. Damphousse played one season for the Oilers and was then foolishly flipped to the Montreal Canadiens, where he went on to have a masterful career.
Damphousse played five seasons in Toronto. The next year he scored 38 goals and 51 assists for a total of 89 points. The following season that improved to 39 and 58. It was the best total of his career, 97. He carried on at that pace the next year. He scored the most goals in his career, 40. He also added 51 assists for 91 points. That season he also helped his team win the Stanley Cup. In Anderson’s best season as a Leaf, he had 65 points.
This was a trade where the Leafs gave up three top-ten picks for big names, not production. Luckily, some of that was salvaged when the organization decided to cut ties with Fuhr and ship him to the Sabres in exchange for Dave Andreychuk.
Bernie Parent
While it is hard to top the level of dreadful that was the Raycroft trade. Allowing goalie Bernie Parent to leave the organization, might be a close second.
In 1971, The Leafs traded with the Philadelphia Flyers for the 25-year-old goaltender. At the time, Jacques Plante was still with the Maple Leafs and helped tutor Parent. It may have helped him develop into the player that was eventually inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Unfortunately, Parent joining the Leafs coincided with Harold Ballard taking control of the organization. It also came at the same time that a competitive league, the World Hockey Association (WHA), was created.
Ahead of the 1972-73 season, the WHA poached multiple Leafs. The league’s first signing happened to be Parent. More Leafs followed that season including Rick Ley, Jim Harrison, Brad Selwood, and Guy Trottier. Ballard, who was notoriously cheap, was unwilling to match those players’ offers.
Parent played one season in the WHA for the Philadelphia Blazers. He then wanted to return to the NHL, but not the Leafs who’s roster was decimated by the upstart league. He requested a trade and general manager, Jim Gregory obliged. The rights to Parent were returned to the Flyers for Doug Favell and a first-round pick in the 1973 NHL entry draft.
Calling this a lopsided trade is an understatement. Favell played poorly for the Leafs while Parent shone brightly. After leaving Toronto, he won two Stanley Cups, was named to two All-Star teams, finished second and fourth in Hart Trophy voting, won the Conn Smythe twice, and the Vezina twice.
Toronto Maple Leafs Top Ten Prospects. dark. Next
While the Leafs have made many errors with their goaltenders throughout the franchise’s history, not every one of them was bad. They have had many quality players between the pipes in blue and white through the years. Hopefully, there are more positives coming in the team’s near future.