Toronto Maple Leafs Lose Out on Best Goalie Available + Tons of NHL News
By James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs tried to trade for Jacob Markstrom last week, which showed that they are aware of how badly they need a goalie.
Despite signing Joseph Woll to a contract extension (which they likely would have done even if they'd successfully landed Markstrom) the Toronto Maple Leafs are very much in need of a goalie because Woll is super injury prone and has only 39 career games to his name.
The Leafs are entering Auston Matthew's prime, and pretty much the only thing they haven't tried over the last eight years is pairing him with one of the NHL's top goalies, something they likely hoped to do before tomorrow's NHL Entry Draft.
However, with Jusse Saros agreeing to sign with the Nashville Predators, as reported by Elliotte Friedman, along with Linus Ullmark going to the Ottawa Senators and Jacob Markstrom going to the New Jersey Devils, the Leafs are running out of options.
John Gibson and Jordan Binnington are not the best options, but they are the best options left to the Leafs at this point.
Toronto Maple Leafs Lose Out on Best Goalie Available + Tons of NHL News
Along with the Saros signing, Thursday night was jam packed with NHL news.
Andrew Mangiapane was traded by the Calgary Flames to the Washington Capitals for a 2025 2nd round pick.
In addition to that trade, the NHL announced some award winners.
To the surprise of no one, Nathan MacKinnon won both the Hart Trophy and the Ted Lindsay awards. It is absolutley disgraceful though that the 69 goal scoring Auston Matthews wasn't even nominated.
Quinn Hughes won the Norris Trophy, something that no Leafs player even came close to winning. The Leafs best defender was either Morgan Rielly or Jake McCabe neither of whom is the best defender on most teams.
Connor Hellebuyck won the Vezina Trophy, which brings us back to the goalie thing and the fact that the Leafs have missed out on the three most desirable options this off-season had to offer.
A trade with Anaheim for John Gibson would be cheap and low-risk with a potentially high reward if Gibson turns out to be a great goalie once he's not on a garbage team. The Leafs might just wait until free-agency and sign Laurent Brossoit, but that is going to really suck because that just isn't good enough.
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Joseph Woll, if he wasn't so injury prone, would be the ideal Leafs starter. Unfortunately, as he proved when Ilya Samsonov was forced to dress for game seven, he just can't be trusted, and that means the Leafs need to do a whole lot better than the Winnipeg Jet's back-up goalie.