Leafs prospect performs well in tournament
By Cam Charron
11 years agoBlogger pays lip service
Look, it’s a bit of a grind in August. The Junior Club World Cup took place this past week and the Sudbury Wolves, the first major junior team to represent Canada at this two-year old tournament were as close to dominating the field as you can get. They won four of their six games, falling in a shootout to Riga and losing in the last round robin game to Linkoping, but out-scored their opposition 27-13, despite the losses.
Josh Leivo, the Leafs’ 3rd round pick in the 2011 draft, apparently had a decent tournament:
Josh Leivo and Frank Corrado scored unassisted goals in the third period to send the Sudbury Wolves of the Ontario Hockey League to a 2-0 victory against the Waterloo Black Hawks of the United States Hockey League in the gold-medal game of the 2012 Junior Club World Cup on Sunday at Omsk Arena in Russia.
You do have to realize this is an average OHL team against an average USHL team (although apparently that’s a mischaracterization), so the competition is pretty unequal. Anyway, the Leafs’ select had a fairly good tournament, which I suppose is better than nothing:
Leivo, a third-round pick of the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2011, scored 7:55 into the third off a breakaway to snap a scoreless tie. The Wolves then struck 35 seconds later to extend the lead to 2-0 when Corrado, a defenseman, unleashed a wrist shot from the slot that beat Waterloo goalie Eamon McAdam (22 saves). Leivo, 19, finished the tournament with six goals and 11 points in six games.
I didn’t watch the game, but the OHL blogs I follow haven’t provided a recap of Leivo’s tournament thus far (he’s outside the focus of Neate Sager’s Yahoo recap). You can watch the final game in Russian commentary here:
Leivo had a decent-enough offensive season in Sudbury last year. He scored 32 goals, which was good for 7th in the OHL among 1993-born players. He’s good, but nothing terrifically special and just another cog in a prospect farm that Corey Pronman is probably correct in calling “deep”, “especially in terms of middle- to low-tier prospects.“
Pension Plan Puppets have Leivo as their #21-ranked player in the team’s “Top 25 under 25”. PPP girlfriend b1rky calls Leivo “a project for sure, but he seems to have the tools and just needs help putting it all together”.
This concludes everything I know about Josh Leivo.
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