Two players Toronto Maple Leafs gave up on will face them in playoffs
In a team with as extensive a history as the Toronto Maple Leafs, not every player will work out.
Over 107 seasons, 975 skaters and 109 goalies have graced the ice for the Leafs, to varying levels of success with the franchise.
So with the Leafs heading back to the playoffs for another season, it’s not crazy to expect that they’ll be running into a few former players of their own this postseason.
Slated for a first-round series against the Ottawa Senators, expected to begin this weekend, several familiar faces will take to the ice against their cross-province rivals.
Among them is 28-year-old winger Mike Amadio, a former Leafs player who spent three games with the franchise in 2021-22 after signing as a free agent. His stay with the team won’t exactly be well-remembered in the history books, as he was held off the scoresheet before eventually being waived by the team.
His NHL career began to blossom from that point forward, though. He found himself in quite the sweet setup with the Vegas Golden Knights.
He spent the next three seasons as a regular in Nevada and won the Stanley Cup in 2023 while scoring five goals and five assists on their playoff run. Having played five games for Ottawa in the 2020-21 season following a trade from the Los Angeles Kings, Amadio re-signed with Ottawa as a free agent this past summer.
Another player the Leafs organization is familiar with is Adam Gaudette, coming off a career-high 17-goal season in Ottawa. A prominent prospect during his time with the Vancouver Canucks, Gaudette has spent time with five different pro organizations, including 40 games in the AHL with the Toronto Marlies in the 2022-23 season.
The Leafs apparently never felt the desire to call him up to the NHL despite his 20 goals and 14 assists in 34 games with the Marlies, and eventually shipped him to St. Louis as part of a three-team deal centred around sending Noel Acciari and Ryan O’Reilly to Toronto.
Behind the Senators’ bench is another name familiar to longtime Leafs fans, though it has been a long time since his affiliation with Toronto. Senators head coach Travis Green played 181 games and 24 playoff games for Toronto across two stints in the 2000s, ending his NHL career with the Leafs in 2006-07.
Interestingly, he was actually on the ice for the Leafs in their 2002 series win over the Senators, scoring a pair of goals and adding three assists for Toronto in the seven-game series win.