Is Pierre Engval Going to Be a Long-Term Solution for the Toronto Maple Leafs?

One of the biggest surprises this season for the Toronto Maple Leafs was Pierre Engvall.

The Toronto Maple Leafs drafted Pierre Engvall in the seventh round of the 2014 NHL Entry Draft.

Prior to this season, Engvall barely registered as a prospect of note even though he’d been a fairly reliable player for the Toronto Marlies last year.

This year, he started out strong in the AHL with 16 points in 15 games, which was good enough to earn him a promotion to the Leafs.

Mike Babcock didn’t use him much, dressing him just once.  But, once Sheldon Keefe took over, Engvall became a regular for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

His season was strong overall, but he finished the year mired in a scoring slump and getting much less ice time that he got in January when he was getting between 12 and 16 minutes per game.

So the question we have is: Is Pierre Engvall going to be a regular fixture on the Leafs going forward, or is he nothing more than a replacement/ depth player?

Pierre Engvall and the Toronto Maple Leafs

Engvall played well enough to earn a $1.25 million dollar two year contract extension.  I don’t love paying him more than the league minimum, but it’s such a slight amount over that I won’t quibble.

If you can get a player at $1.25 million who is better than a replacement player, you’re laughing.  The main goal of any NHL team, due to the salary cap,  should be to find competent players who they can pay (around) a million dollars for.

Let us assume that the Toronto Maple Leafs would use Andreas Johnsson and Zach Hyman as their top two left wingers if their roster was fully healthy. (Maybe they sign Mikheyev and trade Johnsson, but it doesn’t change the calculus).

This would mean that, barring trades or signings that may happen in the future, the Leafs bottom six next year would include Alex Kerfoot, Alex Barabanov, Kasperi Kapanen and Pierre Engvall.

But with Clifford, Gauthier, Spezza, Robertson, Brooks, Korshkov, Petan and Agostino all potentially in the mix for minutes, it remains to be seen if Engvall will be able to crack the roster.

This is a player who, after all, has scored one goal in his last 26 games.

With Engvall on the ice, the Toronto Maple Leafs got 52% of the shot attempts.  They scored 53% of the goals, and 51% of the expected goals.

He scored at a rate of 1.40 points per 60, which slightly more than what is average for a 4th liner.  It’s roughly the same as Gauthier scored.

Engvall as the Leafs 4th most used forward on the PK, and he lead all Leafs penalty killing forwards in Corsi-For percentage,  had the lowest shots-against per 60 rating, and the best expected goals for percentage. (stats naturalstattrick.com).

He also had the lowest goals-against per 60 minutes of PK time.

It appears that for something close to the league minimum, Pierre Engvall can provide above average penalty killing, while having a positive impact on the team at even-strength.

He is only 23 and is still a rookie, so the odds are he gets better.  I think he should definitely have a roster spot on the fourth line.

Who knows at this point what will happen with Johnsson, Kapanen, Clifford, Spezza, Gauthier or Mikheyev, but as the Leafs look to build their roster for next season, they are already in good shape by having a young, cheap 3C in Kerfoot, as well as Pierre Engvall and Alexander Barabanov ready to deploy for practically free.