Toronto Maple Leafs Must Trade Pierre Engvall Immediately

The Toronto Maple Leafs must trade away Pierre Engvall immediately.

Toronto Maple Leafs forward Pierre Engvall currently looks like a player who hates his job. He’s playing uninspired and is providing zero value.

One of the biggest negatives regarding GM Kyle Dubas has been his inability to draft and develop bigger forwards. For years, he’s continue to draft the smaller, skilled player over the taller two-way type of player.

The NHL is progressing towards a skilled league, but you still need size. However, that size needs to play physical in order to be worth it, and unfortunately Engvall plays like he’s 5-foot-6, not 6-foot-5.

I’m not saying that Engvall needs to fight and hit every game he plays, but in 174 career games, he only has 52 PIM’s. Not only that, but he finished 15th on the team during the 2021-22 season in hits.

For someone who’s 6-foot-5, 220 pounds, Engvall should be playing a physical and demanding game, especially as a third-line winger. Sure, he scored 15 goals last year, but I’d rather have someone like David Kampf.

Kampf only makes $1.5M, compared to Engvall’s $2.25M and still scored 11 goals last year. Not only that, but he is one of the team’s best defensive players and does way more without the puck than Engvall.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Trade Pierre Engvall

In six games thus far, Engvall has zero goals and zero points. Throughout his career, Engvall has always been known as a streaky scorer, so I’m sure it’ll eventually come in bunches, but his play without the puck is hard to watch.

He looks like he could run a power-skating class by the way he skates up and down the ice without the puck while making zero impact.

At $2.25M AAV for the rest of the season, Engvall has trade value. If Nick Ritchie could be traded, anyone can, and that cap-space could be incredibly valuable, especially when the Leafs already have an influx of forwards.

Wayne Simmonds or Kyle Clifford are better options than Engvall right now because even if they don’t score, they’re at least banging bodies and causing some trouble. They have an impact on the game that doesn’t show up on the scoresheet and that’s still important.

If the Leafs did trade Engvall, they probably wouldn’t get much in-return, but a depth defenseman could happen. As previously mentioned, Nick Ritchie was traded and he actually fetched Ilya Lyubushkin, who turned into a top-four defenseman for Toronto last year.

Toronto should use Engvall to fetch another defenseman because they desperately need it. Not only are they suffering serious injuries on the blue-line, but their healthy players (*cough, cough, Justin Holl*) look lost.

Although I don’t look at him as much of an asset anymore, some other team will and the Toronto Maple Leafs need to trade him immediately before he’s a healthy-scratch every night.