Toronto Maple Leafs: Pierre Engvall Is Underrated + More Camp Cuts

The Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Ottawa Senators last night by a score of 3-1.

Pierre Engvall was the star with two goals, and the ex-Toronto Maple Leafs player I miss the most – Connor Brown – scored for the Senators, who probably won’t be bad enough to get the first overall pick next year, but will still be very bad indeed.

It’s pretty rough when the newest expansion team has two more NHL quality goalies than you do, but I digress.

About the only thing worth mentioning from this game is Pierre Engvall, who played great, and who, you might remember was actually pretty hot near the end of last season. The Leafs brought in enough players to make you forget about him over the summer, but I think he may just surprise people.  He’s big, he’s great at defense, and, as he showed last night, he can score too.

Before last season started, I wrote about how Engvall was good, but overlooked because of all the depth guys the Leafs brought in.   He still ended up getting in 42 of 56 games, and six of seven playoff games.  With apologies to the likes of Bunting, Ritchie and Brooks, I think we’ll see the same thing happen again this year.

In his last eight games of last season, Engvall posted a 56% Corsi, the Leafs got 63% of the shots while he was on the ice, 53% of the scoring chances, 63% of the dangerous scoring chances, and 63% expected-goals.

In those eight games, he scored four times without any power-play time.  Now, I’m not saying that Engvall is going to be a superstar who comes out and scores 30 goals, but he has definitely earned a job on this team.  (stats naturalstattrick.com).

Toronto Maple Leafs Cuts

The Toronto Maple Leafs assigned Pavel Gogolev (left wing, 21 years old, undrafted, played 13 games for the Marlies last year where he scored at nearly a point per game) and Filip Kral (defense, 21, drafted 5th round 2018) to the Toronto Marlies.

These aren’t the big cuts that we have been expecting all week, but it’s a start.

Additionally, Travis Dermott has been injured.  He was out of last night’s lineup (according to the Leafs PR Twitter account) with a calf injury.  Dermott is pretty underrated – so much so that people keep acting like he’s in a battle for a job.

I don’t think he is.  Dermott has quietly been one of the best 3rd pairing players in the NHL and I think there is about a zero-percent chance that he sits if healthy.

Sandin and Liljegren continue to battle for the final regular spot, but likely they’ll split it until someone shows they have to play every day.   If they both do, I’d suspect it’s Justin Holl and not Travis Dermott who loses his job.