Former Toronto Maple Leafs Defenseman Retires

Former Toronto Maple Leafs blue-liner Carl Gunnarsson is retiring after 12 NHL seasons.

The Toronto Maple Leafs drafted Gunnarsson in the seventh round, 194th overall, of the 2007 NHL Entry Draft.  (stats hockeydb.com).

And while Gunnarsson had a decent, if unspectacular, career, the thing that gets me here is that players drafted after the 2005 lockout are now retiring.  I am old.

The Leafs traded Gunnarsson to the Blues after the 2013-14 season and he’s played there ever since.

Former Toronto Maple Leafs Defenseman Retires

In the end, Gunnarsson had only 30 career goals in 629 games.  He brought no offense to the table, and this prevented him from ever being a star player, but he was very good in his role because he was an excellent defender.

Over the course of his career, Gunnarsson offered very good to elite defense (depending on the season) and was prevented from perhaps being even better by a constant string of injuries – the last time he played 80 games in a year, which he did only once, was 2013-14.

The Leafs traded Gunnarsson to the Blues for Roman Polak and for some reason, despite losing this trade badly, they also included a fourth-round pick.  The Blues used that pick to select Ville Husso a now 26 year old goalie who made his NHL debut this season.

Retrospectively, we can see that Gunnarsson is at least a slightly better player than Polak, though he doesn’t hit as much and so isn’t quite as popular.  The dependable Gunnarsson won a Cup with the Blues, while Polak became a polarizing member of some bad Leafs teams.

The Toronto Maple Leafs, didn’t end up doing too badly, with the trade though.  While Polak is objectively terrible, the Leafs somehow got a pair of 2nd rounders for him (and Nick Spalding, and the taking of a bad contract) from the Sharks before re-signing him in the offseason.

That’s not a bad haul for Gunnarsson, when you think about it. Gunnarsson is one of the only low Leafs draft picks in recent memory who went on to have a solid career.  If the team is known for one thing, it is definitely not for drafting.

This wasn’t as bad as giving away Alex Steen, but Gunnarsson was a likable player and he probably should have been retained for longer.

In the end, he has achieved something almost nobody in NHL history can say they’ve done: get drafted by the Toronto Maple Leafs and go on to win the Stanley Cup.