Maple Leafs Trade Samuel Ersson to the Senators for a 2027 Fifth-Round Pick

Maple Leafs Trade Samuel Ersson to Ottawa

The Maple Leafs traded goaltender Samuel Ersson to the Ottawa Senators for a fifth-round pick in the 2027 NHL Draft, a quiet but logical move that closes the book on a player who was in Toronto for all of 11 days. John Chayka acquired Ersson on June 16 and shipped him down the Highway 417 rivalry before the goaltender ever pulled a Leafs sweater over his pads. For a team that had no intention of qualifying him as a restricted free agent next week, recouping an asset was the only sensible outcome.

This is the kind of housekeeping that defines a busy offseason. It is not a blockbuster. But it tells you something about how Chayka is operating: nothing sits idle, and every contract and every set of rights is treated as a tradeable piece.

How Ersson Got to Toronto in the First Place

Ersson arrived as part of the package Toronto landed when it sent Joseph Woll and Simon Benoit to the Philadelphia Flyers on June 16. In return, the Leafs received Ersson, defenceman Emil Andrae and a third-round pick in the 2026 draft. We broke down the full return in our look at Chayka's first big swing, and the read at the time was that Ersson was the secondary piece — a goaltender on an expiring deal who gave Toronto optionality rather than a long-term answer.

That read held up. Ersson is in the final season of a two-year, $2.9 million contract and was set to become a restricted free agent on July 1. Toronto, by every account, was not planning to extend him a qualifying offer ahead of the June 29 deadline. Rather than let his rights lapse for nothing, the Leafs found a taker.

What the Maple Leafs Got Back

The return is a 2027 fifth-round pick — modest, but not meaningless. It effectively replaces the fifth-rounder Chayka spent last week to pry Darren Raddysh out of Tampa Bay in a sign-and-trade, the move we covered when the Leafs paid up for Raddysh. In other words, Toronto turned a goaltender it didn't want to qualify into a draft pick that restocks the asset shelf. That is a clean piece of inventory management.

For Ottawa, Ersson figures to compete for the backup job behind Linus Ullmark after Leevi Merilainen and James Reimer split that role for much of last season. His underlying numbers were nothing special in Philadelphia — 14-11-5 with a 3.12 goals-against average and an .870 save percentage across 33 games (29 starts) — but on a cheap, expiring deal, he is a reasonable depth bet for a division rival.

What Ersson's Numbers Actually Say

It is worth being honest about the player Toronto moved. Ersson's 2025-26 line — a 3.12 goals-against average and an .870 save percentage — is below the league's starter standard, and an .870 is a number that gets goalies sent to the press box, not handed a qualifying offer. Some of that reflects the team in front of him in Philadelphia, but not all of it. He is a 26-year-old with a reasonable pedigree who simply has not put together the kind of season that makes a club commit money to him.

For Toronto, that made the decision easy. There was never a scenario where the Leafs were attaching themselves to Ersson long-term. He was a contract and a set of rights that arrived in a bigger trade, and Chayka's only real job was to extract whatever residual value existed before those rights expired. A 2027 fifth-round pick is exactly that residual value, captured cleanly.

The Andrae Piece Is the One That Stays

Lost in the goaltender shuffle is the player from the Woll trade who actually sticks: Emil Andrae. The 24-year-old defenceman is the piece Toronto valued most in the Philadelphia return, a mobile, puck-moving left-shot blueliner who fits the younger, faster identity Chayka has been chasing all summer. Where Ersson was a rental to be flipped, Andrae is a developmental bet with NHL upside on a cheap deal.

That framing helps explain the whole sequence. Toronto did not trade Woll for Ersson; it traded Woll for Andrae, a 2026 third-round pick and the flexibility to turn Ersson into more draft capital. Viewed that way, moving Ersson on for a 2027 fifth is not a footnote — it is the final step of a deal that was always about the defenceman and the picks.

The Bigger Picture: Toronto's Crease Behind Anthony Stolarz

Trading Ersson clarifies the Maple Leafs goaltending picture, and it also exposes a real question. Anthony Stolarz is the unquestioned starter heading into 2026-27. Behind him, Toronto is now leaning on 24-year-olds Artur Akhtyamov and Dennis Hildeby, both of whom impressed with the Marlies during their Calder Cup run but have a combined handful of NHL games between them.

That is a thin, young depth chart for a long season. The NHL schedule expands to 84 games in 2026-27, and Stolarz has never started more than 33 games in a single season across his decade-long career. The math is uncomfortable: a starter with a workload ceiling, plus two unproven kids, is not a tandem most contenders would walk into October with. We laid out the stakes in our breakdown of the crease logjam behind Stolarz, and trading Ersson only sharpens the point.

Does This Mean Another Goalie Move Is Coming?

It should. Toronto can absolutely give Akhtyamov or Hildeby a genuine NHL look — both have earned the conversation — but handing one of them 35-plus starts behind an injury-prone starter is a gamble. The more likely path is that Chayka adds a veteran backup on a cheap, short-term deal in free agency, the kind of low-cost insurance that does not eat into the roughly $18.8 million in cap space Toronto is carrying into July 1.

There is also the Stolarz contract conversation hovering over all of it. He is a pending unrestricted free agent himself, and his name has surfaced in trade chatter even as the team publicly backs him. For now, the Ersson trade reads as a depth-clearing move, not a signal about the starter. But it does raise the urgency of settling the crease before the season starts.

The timing helps Chayka here. Trading Ersson before July 1 means the Leafs walk into the goalie market with a clearly defined need rather than a redundancy, and a thin, cheap depth piece is exactly the kind of contract that tends to be available once the early free-agent frenzy clears. Toronto does not need to win the opening hours of free agency in the crease. It needs the right veteran on the right deal, and it now has the roster clarity to go find one.

The Bottom Line on the Ersson Trade

The Maple Leafs traded Samuel Ersson because keeping him made no sense and qualifying him made even less. Turning him into a 2027 fifth-round pick is a tidy bit of work that recovers the capital Chayka spent on Raddysh and tidies the goaltending depth chart. The catch is that the chart it leaves behind — Stolarz and two unproven 24-year-olds — is one Toronto cannot ride into the season untouched. Expect the crease to be the next item on the to-do list, and keep an eye on the contracts page as free agency opens.