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Toronto Maple Leafs castoff sets a KHL goal-scoring record

Adam Laskaris
Adam Laskaris
|
Mar 17 2025, 3:50 pm
Toronto Maple Leafs castoff sets a KHL goal-scoring record
Tom Szczerbowski/USA TODAY Sports

A little over five years ago, it wasn’t all that common to see Toronto Maple Leafs fans arguing about what to do with Josh Leivo.

A talented third-round pick in the 2011 draft, Leivo suited up for Toronto in parts of six seasons but never played more than 27 games for the team in a single year.

He was eventually shipped off to the Vancouver Canucks for Michael Carcone (who never played for the Leafs), and had stints with the Calgary Flames, Carolina Hurricanes, and St. Louis Blues after leaving Toronto. With club after club in the NHL seemingly calling it quits on the Innisfil, Ont. native, Leivo opted to take his talents to Russia, joining Ufa Salavat Yulayev of the KHL last year.

He put up a modest 15-23-38 statline in 40 games in his debut KHL campaign but has been quite legitimately one of the most electric players in league history ever since.

In 59 games this season, Leivo has put up 45 goals and 29 assists, putting him first in league scoring.

Since the calendar turned over in January, Leivo has only picked up his historic pace; he’s put up 19 goals in his last 29 games, a mark of 0.65 goals per game.

He’s scored hat tricks on four different occasions, a single-season KHL record for one player.

His 45th goal, scored this past Saturday, also signalled another historic marker: it’s officially the best goal-scoring season by a non-Russian player in league history, topping American forward Reid Boucher’s 44 a year ago. Boucher, like Leivo, also went over after failing to stick in the NHL, having played for the Canucks, New Jersey Devils, and Nashville Predators.

Sergei Mozyakin is the only player in KHL history to score more goals than Leivo in a single season, scoring 48 in 2016-17 for Magnitogorsk Metallurg. Leivo has three games left in his regular season to tie or break the record.

Given that Leivo probably had some personal doubts about how he’d fit into a new league, it’s safe to say things probably couldn’t have gone much better.

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