Longtime Toronto Maple Leafs Prospect to Make NHL Debut

Toronto Maple Leafs top goalie prospect Joseph Woll will make his NHL debut tonight against the Buffalo Sabres.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are coming off a fantastic display of hockey where they beat the Calgary Flames 2-1 in O.T,   a final score that was extremely generous to the Calgary Flames.

The Leafs are overcoming some terrible puck luck and have won seven of their last eight games.  Tonight they take on the Buffalo Sabres for the first time since the NHL shutdown for Covid in 2020.

The Leafs will give Jack Campbell the night off and, as mentioned, Joseph Woll will make his NHL debut. Buffalo is likely to counter with old friend Aaron Dell. 

Toronto Maple Leafs vs Buffalo Sabres

The Sabres are coming off a win last night against the Oilers, so both teams are in the second half of back-to-backs (hence the goalie matchup).  Their record is 6-5-2 which is fantastic in comparison to expectations, but that said, there is no excuse for the Leafs to ever lose to this team.

The big story tonight is Joseph Woll.  The Toronto Maple Leafs drafted him in the third round of the 2016 NHL draft, and given the recent (laughable) hysteria surrounding the Leafs goalie situation after the injury to Petr Mrazek, expectations for him are no longer high.

Campbell is not well established as a starter, having only played 99 career games, most of them as a back-up playing when his team’s starter could not.  Michael Hutchinson is not a reliable second-string goalie, and the team’s closest goalie prospects (Woll and Ian Scott) have not played much in the last two seasons.

This has led to the aforementioned hysteria, but the facts are that Campbell has been great, and,. given the waiver rules, Hutchinson is about the best 3rd string you could expect to actually keep on the team. Goalie performance is so unpredictable anyways that even if they had better goalie prospects and something better than Hutchinson you still couldn’t be confident, so why worry about it?

It is pretty weird that Woll has made the NHL despite never playing more than 37 games in a season for the last five years.  You would think you’d have to ply your trade a bit more often in order to make it as a pro.  That leads me to believe that he must have some fantastic raw talent, but who knows? You can barely predict the performance of an established star goalie, let a lone a kid who plays only sporadically.

Still, I’d be curious to know if any goalie had ever made the NHL playing less than Woll over a the five years since he was drafted.

Woll has played 3 games for the Marlies this year, he has a 3.38 GAA and a save percentage of .895….so he probably gets a shut-out tonight.