Throwback Thursday: On this day in 2011, Toronto Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke fields offers on Clarke MacArthur

Welcome back to this week’s edition of Throwback Thursday!

On this day in 2011, Leafs GM Brian Burke said he had been fielding multiple offers on the club’s leading scorer Clarke MacArthur.

“Twenty-four hours before the most celebrated deadline in hockey was set to toll, Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke said he had fielded ‘several offers’ for winger Clarke MacArthur,” penned the National Post’s Sean Fitz-Gerald. “Burke has several cards he could play heading toward the National Hockey trade deadline.”

MacArthur had put up 47 points in 62 games through that point and ended the full season with 21 goals and 41 assists for a career-high 62 points. Burke never dealt the forward, instead opting to hold onto him and resign him to a two-year, $3.25-million deal to stick around.

“He’s had a marvelous year for us,” Burke had told Hockey Night in Canada days earlier. “He’s played well. He’s a real good kid, but it is the first year he’s had of this magnitude, and the difficulty in fixing a value on a player who might be emerging as a player, [or] who might be a one-hit-wonder.”

And MacArthur was never quite the same player, largely in part to concussion issues that plagued him. The following year he put up 20 goals and 23 assists in 73 games, before playing in Germany during the lockout.

He returned for one more year with Toronto, scoring 20 points in 40 games, before opting to sign with the Ottawa Senators.

Toronto ended up only making one trade that deadline: flipping John Mitchell to the New York Rangers for a 2012 7th round pick. Toronto ended up drafting defenceman Viktor Loov, who appeared in four games for the Leafs in 2015-16.

On Twitter: @zjlaing