He was once thought of being a potential middle six scoring winger for the Toronto Maple Leafs, but the stars never aligned for Josh Leivo.
Since leaving the Toronto Maple Leafs, Leivo bounced around the NHL before landing in Russia playing for Ufa Salavat Yulayev of the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) at the start of the 2023-24 season and he has exploded as the league's top goal scorer.
Saturday Leivo set the KHL record for most goals in a single season with his 49th of the campaign on the final game of the regular season. Leivo surpasses former Columbus Blue Jackets draft pick Sergei Mozyakin who set the previous record during the 2016-17 season (ref. quanthockey.com).
Canadian forward Josh Leivo has broken the KHL record for most goals in a single regular season with 49. He finished the year with 80 points in 62 GP, most in the KHL and 9 shy of the record. pic.twitter.com/KSLs2umVa5
— NHL News (@PuckReportNHL) March 22, 2025
Despite missing six games during the season, Leivo will not just walk away with the single season goal record, but he finishes with 80-points in 62 games which gives him the 2024-25 KHL scoring title.
Josh Leivo showed he had scoring ability in North America
After the Maple Leafs selected Leivo in the third round in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft he would go back to the Ontario Hockey League for two years where he averaged 30-goals per season with each of the Sudbury Wolves and Kitchener Rangers. In 2013-14, Leivo became a full-time winger with the Toronto Marlies where he showed he was goal scorer as he contributed 23-goals in his rookie season in the AHL.
In 2015-16, when the organization was going into full tank mode, Leivo was called up for 12 games down the stretch which resulted in a four game goal scoring streak and five goals in his final eight games (ref. hockey-reference.com).
Many fans thought he was showing signs of becoming an eventual top scoring winger, but it never amounted. Unfortunately for Leivo, the Maple Leafs organization was shifting and they had a lot of talent coming to the team including Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, Kasperi Kapanen, Connor Brown and Zach Hyman.
During the 2017-18 season, after playing just 12 of the team's first 54 games news came out that Leivo was starting to get disgruntled with his lack of opportunity and stated he wanted to be a Toronto Maple Leaf, but also wanted to play.
After signing a new contract the following season, Kyle Dubas promised Leivo that if he wasn't getting the opportunity he would find a team to trade him to, which landed him in Vancouver after 27 games that year. In the final 49 games with the Canucks he would finish with ten goals, giving him 14 on the season combined.
He would spend the next few seasons signing one-year contracts with the Calgary Flames, Carolina Hurricanes and St. Louis Blues, however, he could not contribute enough to be a mainstay in the NHL and spent the majority of 2021-22 in the AHL where he averaged nearly a point per game.
After splitting the 2022-23 year between the AHL and NHL, Leivo decided to go overseas to Russia for the start of last season and has now become an All-Star in what is considered as the second best league in the world.
With such a big impactful season this year in the KHL you have to wonder if the Innisfail native can find himself back in the NHL.