Good morning! Do not be alarmed.
While you were busy doing other things like, I don’t know, sleeping at a reasonable hour, the Toronto Maple Leafs were not. No, they were busy making a trade with a team in a time zone three hours behind them, when it makes sense they would be up.
Jhonas Enroth’s time as a Maple Leaf/Marlie is officially over, as he’s been traded to the Anaheim Ducks for a 2018 seventh round pick.
The Leafs announced that the club has traded goaltender Jhonas Enroth to Anaheim for a 7th-round draft pick in the 2018 NHL Draft #TMLtalk
— Leafs PR (@LeafsPR) January 11, 2017
That’s it. That’s the entire trade.
And it’s a good one, in the most minor sense of the word. (And not just because Enroth had basically turned into a minor league goalie. Puns!) The Leafs picked up a free agent goaltender, signed him to a no-risk one-year, $750,000 deal, and when it didn’t work out, exchanged him for an asset.
A seventh round pick, sure - but as long as you have a good scouting department, even those picks can be valuable. The Leafs have been seeing some early success with some sixth rounders recently, so why not, right?
The point is: the Leafs basically just got something for nothing. That’s a win every time.
Enroth only suited up for six games with the Leafs (one of which he only dressed for like, five minutes) and wasn’t particularly good by any stretch, posting a .872 save percentage.
He also played three games with the Marlies, putting up a .904 save percentage there, which certainly isn’t good at the AHL level (and he was one of the Marlies’ worst goalies by that metric, too).
We probably should have seen this coming since the Leafs claimed Curtis McElhinney off of waivers like, 13-ish hours before dealing Enroth - especially now that we know a team out there saw some use for him. Remember Jonathan Bernier? He’s not faring much better, with a .897 save percentage through 15 games for the Ducks this season.
Toronto has been dealing with an influx of goalies all season while Frederik Andersen has found, and then held down the fort in the NHL, which has resulted in Enroth yo-yoing up and down between majors and minors.
Hopefully, for him at least, the yo-yoing stops. In the meantime, thanks for the 2018 seventh round pick.