There are a few takeaways here, not the least of which is that we probably should have put some sort of warning for Maple Leafs and Flyers fans at the top of this piece to prevent them from reading any further. Read this Down Goes Brown piece to get a sense of what that phase of his life was like. January 31, 2010 — Anaheim trades Jean-Sebastien Giguere to Toronto for Vesa Toskala and Jason Blake. Other data sources include the Hockey Summary Project and Hockey Databank. Miller and Luongo aren’t directly comparable after all, and that might end up being good news for the Sabres, since the Panthers and then-GM Mike Keenan got taken to the cleaners on the Luongo deal. June 30, 2006 — Columbus trades Marc Denis to Tampa Bay for Fredrik Modin and Fredrik Norrena. Vokoun needed surgery to dissolve a blood clot during training camp and will miss most of the season. Toskala started slow — as did the rest of the Sharks — but after the Joe Thornton trade his play noticeably improved. The mercurial Finnish goalie is this week’s ex-Shark. All rights reserved. And this year, the early rumor mill has had a running theme: goaltending. You could make a case for the Islanders, where Evgeni Nabokov has been struggling lately. Vesa Toskala would be traded to a team where he could entrench himself as a number-one goaltender: he deserved it, both on the basis of his quality play and his positive attitude. Pogge played just seven games in the NHL; Rask is arguably the best goalie in the NHL right now; Raycroft lasted one year as the starter in Toronto and now plays for the last-place team in a Swedish tier-two league.

And in both cases, a long-term extension looked more and more unlikely as the process continued, making a trade start to feel inevitable. We may not know much at all about what you should expect. June 17, 2010 — Montreal trades Jaroslav Halak to St. Louis for Lars Eller and Ian Schultz.9. Toskala spent the bulk of 2001-02 with San Jose’s AHL affiliate in Cleveland, though he saw his first taste of NHL action that year. I was surprised to learn it was true. You may be waiting awhile, you may have trouble finding a trade partner, and you may not get as much in return as you’re hoping you will. But 4th round pick Toskala — and fellow ‘95 draftee Miikka Kiprusoff, selected in the following round — were the two bright spots of the class. July 1, 2011 — Washington trades Semyon Varlamov to Colorado for a first-round pick and a conditional second-round pick. It’s less likely, but the Senators could decide to move either Craig Anderson or Robin Lehner.

This trade was technically for Bryzgalov’s negotiating rights, since he was about to become an unrestricted free agent and wasn’t going to re-sign in Phoenix. With Nabokov on the bench, the unspectacular but positionally sound Toskala earned a point in 27 of his last 29 starts down the stretch. “It's hard, most of the time I just black out.”. A 31-year-old Grant Fuhr landed the Maple Leafs a proven 50-goal scorer and first-round pick in 1993; two years later, a 30-year-old Patrick Roy got the Canadiens barely anything at all.12. "I love this place, this organization and especially the goalie coaching," Sharks goaltender Vesa Toskala told Ross McKeon in 2006. Beyond Edmonton, the list of buyers gets pretty thin. But can we find any tendencies in those previous transactions that would help us figure out this year’s market for someone like Miller? That scenario has some definite parallels to Miller’s. But Toskala was stealing the headlines: he hadn’t lost a game in his last 8 starts. Opportunity momentarily knocked in 2002-03: Nabokov held out for more money.

June 22, 2012 — Philadelphia trades Sergei Bobrovsky to Columbus for a second-round pick and two fourth-round picks. I have no idea what he’s doing now. Toskala played a month in Sweden, and then retired after playing a season right where he started: Ilves Tampere. That’s not terribly unusual, as the position is a point of focus for most teams, but this year’s chatter seems especially intense. The tide had effectively turned, and Nabokov’s inconsistent play meant that Toskala was San Jose’s starting goaltender. More importantly, the return on a starting goalie is all over the map, ranging from failed prospects like Ty Wishart all the way up to future superstars like Tuukka Rask. Born in Tampere, Finland on May 20th, 1977, Toskala was drafted out of his hometown by the San Jose Sharks in the 1995 Entry Draft, the disastrous draft in which San Jose picked six Finnish players they knew little about. It's harder to figure out than you might think. “I look at [Miikka] as a very talented goalie and I expect him to go to Calgary and do well," Sharks General Manager and Master of Understatement Doug Wilson said at the time. Against a buzzsaw of an Edmonton Oilers team, Toskala was wildly inconsistent: he looked good in the early going, and then utterly fell apart in Games 4 and 5 against Edmonton. That means we’re left with lots of sellers, not many buyers, and a handful of reasonable options available for nothing. Watch our How-To Videos to Become a Stathead, Subscribe to Stathead and get access to more data than you can imagine. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that those Miller-for-Yakupov rumors fizzled. The Leafs still saw fit to give up one of their two top goaltending prospects for him — and to make matters worse, they chose to hold on to Justin Pogge and send Tuukka Rask to the Bruins instead.

Vesa Toskala In the 2002–03 NHL season, after Evgeni Nabokov and the Sharks could not settle on a contract, Toskala served as Kiprusoff's backup.

the official stats partner of the NHL. WHA hat tricks courtesy Scott Surgent. During a 10-game midseason stretch where Nabokov was injured, Toskala went 5-1-3 with a .948 save percentage and helped the Sharks climb from 13th place to a playoff spot.

June 22, 2007 — San Jose trades Vesa Toskala and Mark Bell to Toronto for first-, second-, and fourth-round picks.

It’s downright rare to see a team move a decent goalie unless it has a backlog at the position. Question, Comment, Feedback, or Correction? Play he did. First, let’s look at the current landscape.

With Nabokov entrenched as number one goaltender and Kiprusoff and Toskala both on one-way contracts, training camp was an open competition for the backup job. But Toskala’s strong training camp and play during the early part of the season forced San Jose’s hand. San Jose carried three goalies for the first 18 games of the season, and on November 27, 2003, they dealt Kiprusoff to the Calgary Flames for a fifth round pick. Given that these two goalies are otherwise nearly identical the big difference in winning records is solely attributable to the difference in goal support. At some point this season, the thinking goes, we’re going to see some blockbuster goalie deals.2. But Miller is only one of several good goaltenders who could be available. And while Bertuzzi had been considered one of the league’s best wingers as recently as 2003, he was 31 years old and still dealing with the fallout of his attack on Steve Moore.18 He played just seven games with Florida before being sidelined with a bad back, and was eventually traded to the Red Wings for Shawn Matthias and a pick. 6 games later, his NHL career was over. Game-by-game stat line for the player (Regular season since 1979-80 only). But if the choice is between trading valuable assets and adding a free agent who won’t cost you anything beyond cap room, then the second option can start to look appealing.