Toronto Maple Leafs Correct in Choosing Engvall Over Mikheyev

The Toronto Maple Leafs resigned one of their last two restricted free-agents on Sunday.

Though Rasmus Sandin remains unsigned, the Toronto Maple Leafs locked up Pierre Engvall yesterday for one year at $2.25.

Engvall made $1.25 last season and was eligible for arbitration, meaning the Leafs had to give him some kind of raise or he could have forced a higher one upon them.

In light of that, his remaining upside, and what he’s already accomplished, the cap hit is fine.  Ideally you’d like to get multiple years if you go beyond the minimum, but Engvall took big strides last year and you can respect him for thinking that there is a bigger payday out there for him.

Having players locked up is good, but never under-estimate the power of motivation, and one-year deals can be very motivating.

Toronto Maple Leafs and Pierre Engvall

The $2.25 really is quite good for what Engvall brings.

He’s above average offensively, and defensively.  Last year, with David Kampf, Engvall was used in an extremely uncommon defensive role.

Most player’s usage is nowhere near as extreme as the Kampf-Engvall line used by the Toronto Maple Leafs last season.  In the entire NHL, nobody *(min. 800 minutes) started less of their shifts in the offensive zone than David Kampf.  Pierre Engvall was ranked 10th.

Of those ten players, only three had Expected Goals rating above 50%, and only Pierre Engvall’s 55% went above 52.  In other words, while playing some of the toughest minutes in the NHL, Engvall’s team was usually comes out on top. (Stats naturalstattrick.com).

Given that Engvall’s main partner has perhaps the worst offensive game of any regular player in the NHL, Engvall’s 15 goals and 20 assists, coming with almost no power-play time, are extremely impressive.

Engvall scored at a rate of 1.75 points per 60 minutes of 5v5 ice-time, which is very good second-line level production.  He did it while playing with a defensive specialist, in a extremely defensive role, with almost no special teams time, while getting among the lowest individual and on-ice shooting-percentage on the team.

This strongly suggests that he has more offense to his game, in addition to being an extremely strong defensive player.

In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with paying $2.2 million for a player who you can play throughout your lineup, on either special teams, and who can play shut-down minutes for you while chipping in the odd goal here and there and bringing a little upside.

Ilya Mikheyev just signed a four-year $5 million dollar cap hit contract with Vancouver, and Pierre Engvall scores at the same rate while playing better defense, and he brings more upside.

The Leafs kept the better player, and the much, much cheaper player.