Toronto Maple Leafs castoff on historic goal-scoring pace in the KHL
If you try hard enough, just about every story in hockey can be connected back to the Toronto Maple Leafs in one way or another.
In the case of Ufa Salavat Yulayev forward Josh Leivo, it’s a story that goes back over a decade ago, when the Leafs selected him in the third round of the 2011 NHL Entry Draft.
Over the next seven years, Leivo would suit up in 87 games for Toronto, scoring 13 goals and adding 13 assists along the way.
But while some fans projected him as a future top-six forward with the Leafs, that reality never really came to fruition.
He never played more than 27 games in a single season for Toronto, never suited up in a playoff game, and followed up a promising 2016-17 season where he had 10 points in 13 games followed up by 10 points in his next 43 games before he was eventually shipped out of town.
It’s been over six years since he left the franchise via a trade to the Vancouver Canucks, and he’s now on his seventh team since leaving the team that drafted him, but he’s finally established himself as a true hockey star, even if it’s no longer in the NHL.
To say Leivo has fit in well in his second KHL season in Ufa would be a massive understatement.
In 35 games, Leivo has put up 26 goals while also adding 15 assists for a total of 41 points. He’s far and away the best scorer in the league this season, with his 0.74 goals per game dwarfing second-place Danil Aimurzin, who has 21 goals in 39 games for Severstal Cherepovets.
If he continues on his pace, Leivo has an outside shot at Sergei Mozyakin’s record-setting 2016-17 season, where he put up 48 goals in one campaign. KHL seasons are 68 games, with Ufa having 29 remaining in the 2024-25 regular season. As his pace stands, he’s projected to put 21 more goals in this year, should he suit up for every game, which would put him at 46 on the season.
Since its founding in 2008, there have only been three 40-goal seasons in KHL history, but Leivo could become the fourth player ever to reach that milestone.
Nigel Dawes, with 36 goals in 2016-17, holds the goal record for a Canadian-born player in a single KHL season, though he later changed his IIHF nationality to Kazakhstan to represent them on the world stage.
In 75 games played for Ufa across two KHL seasons, Leivo has now potted 41 goals. In 265 NHL games, Leivo managed a total of 42 goals while playing in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Carolina, and St. Louis, having last played in the league in 2022-23.
Leivo may never sniff the NHL ever again, but it is wild to see exactly how impressive his KHL totals have been, considering how many players make the jump to Russia and don’t see a fraction of his success.
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