Toronto Maple Leafs sign Martin Jones to a one-year, $875K contract
By Joseph Zita
11 months agoThe busy summer of new Maple Leafs General Manager Brad Treliving continues.
The Toronto Maple Leafs announced Wednesday afternoon that the club has signed veteran goalie Martin Jones to a one-year, $875K contract for the 2023-24 season.
After losing Erik Kallgren in free agency and Matt Murray going on LTIR at the start of the season, the Maple Leafs needed a bit of insurance in the net without relying on their young inexperienced goalies in the AHL to come up and play games if it ever came to that.
Well, for now, they no longer have to because Treliving went out and signed Martin Jones to play that role as the team’s third goalie and give the club some much needed depth at the position.
Well, I hope that’s what Treliving thought about when he signed Jones to this contract because I, along with many others, don’t see Jones as this team’s backup goalie. It should be Joseph Woll’s job.
Martin Jones was a good goalie early on in his career, but ever since the 2018-19 season, it kind of went downhill pretty fast.
Here are his numbers between 2013-14 and 2017-18:
2013-14: 19 GP – 12-6-0 – .934 SV% – 1.81 GAA
2014-15: 15 GP – 4-5-2 – .906 SV% – 2.24 GAA
2015-16: 65 GP – 37-23-4 – .918 SV% – 2.27 GAA
2016-17: 65 GP – 35-23-6 – .912 SV% – 2.40 GAA
2017-18: 60 GP – 30-22-6 – .915 SV% – 2.55 GAA
As you can see, he put up three consecutive seasons with a save percentage of .912 or better while playing in at least 60 games. However, after the 2017-18 season is where his numbers took a massive decline.
2018-19: 62 GP – 36-19-5 – .896 SV% – 2.94 GAA
2019-20: 41 GP – 17-21-2 – .896 SV% – 3.00 GAA
2020-21: 34 GP – 15-13-4 – .896 SV% – 3.28 GAA
2021-22: 35 GP – 12-18-3 – .900 SV% – 3.42 GAA
2022-23: 48 GP – 27-13-3 – .886 SV% – 2.99 GAA
Those are not pretty numbers, no matter how you look at them. His games played declined throughout the years, and although his goals against average arent crazy high – besides the 2021-22 season – it’s his save percentage that stands out the most and is most concerning.
A pretty low or average goals-against-average with a low save percentage means he’s just not saving the shots that he is facing despite not seeing a ton of shots on goal.
However, it is goalie depth at the end of the day and every team would like a little more insurance between the pipes, and Martin Jones as the Maple Leafs’ third-string goalie is more than fine with me unless he is taking starts away from Woll, then we may have a problem here.
(Stats from Hockey-Reference.com)
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