Toronto Maple Leafs: Multiple Factors Working Against Pierre Engvall

The Toronto Maple Leafs significantly added to their depth this off-season.

While the Toronto Maple Leafs were a very deep team last year (they had/have Kenny Agostino and Adam Brooks in the AHL and both would be excellent NHL 4th liners) this year they really drove the point home with a series of name-brand acquisitions.

The Leafs brought in Jimmy Vesey, Joe Thornton, Wayne Simmonds and others to augment what was already a pretty deep team.

Now, the Leafs clearly want to create an environment where players are fighting for ice time, which should help the team in a self-evident way.  And they also clearly are preparing for the fact that the injuries and fatigue may be larger than usual factors if – as expected – the NHL season is condensed to make up for the fact that they won’t be starting until January.

All this is great news, unless you’re Pierre Engvall, who has two huge strikes against him that most of the other players don’t have.

Pierre Engvall’s Lineup Chances

The Leafs top six is 100% guaranteed to feature four obvious players, and (I assume) some combination of Hyman, Mikheyev and Robertson.  Obviously players like Vesey or Simmonds could theoretically earn top-six ice time, but for the sake of illustrating depth, lets ignore that possibility for now.

The Leafs bottom two lines will feature some combination of: Robertson/Mikheyev, Kerfoot, Thornton, Simmonds, Spezza, Engvall, Vesey, Malgin, Barabanov, Travis Boyd, Joey Anderson, Nick Petan, Fillip Hallander, Kenny Agostino, Yegor Korshkovv and Adam Brooks.

Even if you do away with the longshots, there are still at least ten reasonable choices for ice-time before any injuries occur.

Last season Engval was worth 1 WAR, due mostly to his excellent (you could say elite) penalty Killing.  In a league where 5 wins you an MVP trophy, 1 WAR is very good. Now Penalty Killing is no reason to favor one player over the other, but its still a factor.  Engvall is large, skates well for someone so big, and is responsible defensively.  He’s probably also going to score a bit more than he did, and has at least a chance of being an above average NHL regular.

He can play centre and the wing, and he’s a useful player.  He finished with a 52% Corsi, a 53% expected goals rating, and the Leafs significantly outperformed their opposition when Engvall played.

The problems with Engvall holding on to his lineup spot are probably too big for him to overcome, unfortunately.  I don’t think he’ll be dressing when the Leafs are fully healthy (although you never know, like I said, he’s a good player).

Thornton, Spezza and Boyd all make $700 K. Engvall makes almost double that, and he can go to the minors without having to clear waivers, at least for between 15 and 19 more games. However, those are 15 (or 19) games in which Engvall plays, so theoretically, they could use him sporadically and stretch that eligibility across the whole season.

When the Leafs are making daily transactions to manipulate the salary cap, Engvall looks to be a casualty.

Additionally, there is the fact that the Leafs have four name-brand players he’ll have to beat out.  Spezza, Thornton, Simmonds and Vesey are players who Engvall will have to significantly be better to in order to take ice time from.   When in doubt, tie goes to the name-brand guy who you’ll lose if you try to demote him.  (All stats naturalstattrick.com).

I like Engvall and this kind of sucks for him, but regardless, he’ll make more next year to try and make the NHL than  most people would in ten lifetimes.