Emil Andrae Fit: The Sleeper Piece of the Woll Trade Signs On

The Emil Andrae Maple Leafs move was a throw-in — and it might matter

The Emil Andrae Maple Leafs situation has been treated as a footnote to the June 16 trade that sent Joseph Woll and Simon Benoit to Philadelphia. Fair enough — Woll was the headline, and Samuel Ersson was the reason the deal made sense to insiders. Andrae was the piece nobody wrote much about.

That was a mistake. Chayka's first big trade after taking over hockey operations moved a starting-caliber goaltender and a bottom-pair defenceman for a smaller, younger blue-liner and a rental goalie who was flipped to Ottawa nine days later. Netting the deal out, Toronto essentially traded Woll and Benoit for Andrae and a third-round pick. In a summer where the blue-line skewed older by the week, that is a bigger prize than most fans have credited.

Who Andrae is, in plain terms

Emil Andrae is 24, from Karlstad, Sweden, and was drafted 54th overall by Philadelphia in the 2020 NHL Draft. He is listed at 5-foot-9. He shoots left. He is not going to remove anyone's head. He is going to move the puck out of his own zone against a forecheck, log clean minutes at five-on-five, and add a genuine second option on the second-unit power play if Toronto ever asks him to.

Last year with the Flyers, he played 61 games. He put up 13 points — modest — on a team that was not exactly generating chances. His expected-goal share at five-on-five was 51.8 per cent, per the public trackers. His penalty-differential was flat. He was, by every reasonable measure, a competent third-pair NHL defenceman on his entry-level deal.

The contract is the tell

The two-year, $3.1 million extension Andrae signed on July 4 is the part that says the Leafs are not treating him as a filler. That is a $1.55 million cap hit — not free, not throwaway, and long enough to lock in his RFA rights through 2028. Toronto could have qualified him for the minimum. Instead, they paid slightly above and got a second guaranteed year at the same rate.

Chayka does not overpay throw-ins. If Andrae's role in Toronto were merely emergency depth, this would be a one-year, minimum-qualifying-offer contract with a bus ticket to Coachella Valley. He is here to compete for a lineup spot.

The fit problem is real

The blue line Andrae is walking into is, on paper, closed on his side. Rielly is signed and, per his July comments, not going anywhere. Oliver Ekman-Larsson is on the second pair. Jake McCabe is on the top pair. Left-handed shots do not open up in Toronto right now.

Andrae has some experience on the right, but he has never played there full-time and there is no reason to force him into it. His most realistic path is a third-pair role that opens on the first significant injury — and one of Rielly, Tanev or Ekman-Larsson will pick one up before Christmas. Roster pages age less predictably than fan-argument threads suggest.

Why the youth infusion matters

Toronto's blue line, as constituted, has an average age north of 30. Rielly is 32. Tanev is 36. Ekman-Larsson is 35. McCabe is 32. Simon Benoit's exit removed one of the two under-30 regulars. Andrae, at 24, is now the youngest defenceman on a two-way contract in the room by a wide margin.

That matters for two reasons. One, the group needs a legitimate third-pair option who can play now and add a step of speed. Two, Toronto has almost no defensive prospects with clear paths to the NHL in the next 24 months. The prospect pool is thin on the back end.

What Andrae has to prove in camp

Andrae's training camp checklist is short and specific:

• Handle the forecheck cleanly under NHL speed — he is small and can be pinned
• Show enough right-side comfort to be a real emergency option there
• Prove out on the penalty kill for depth minutes
• Demonstrate a power-play look — his shot from the point was a Philadelphia development priority

If he checks three of those four, he makes the opening-night roster. If he checks two, he starts in the AHL and is up by American Thanksgiving.

The Marlies backup is not the worst thing

If Andrae ends up with the Marlies to start the season, it is genuinely fine. He is waiver-exempt for one more year and would be Toronto's highest-quality Marlies defenceman by a significant margin, giving the AHL club an anchor and giving Toronto a plug-and-play call-up. The 84-game schedule and the age of the NHL blue line make it likely that call-up comes early and often.

Andrae would also be first in line to grab a spot if Toronto ends up trading Rielly at the deadline — a scenario Chayka has publicly dismissed but which the market keeps re-litigating. His two-year, low-cap deal gives Toronto an insurance policy at every step of that hypothetical.

The size question, and why it matters less than it used to

The first thing anyone says about Andrae is that he is 5-foot-9. That is a real limitation in the NHL — smaller defencemen have historically had a harder time surviving cycle-heavy shifts in the corners — but the league has been softening on it for a decade. Quinn Hughes is 5-foot-10 and just signed one of the richest defence deals in league history. Torey Krug played eight years in Boston at 5-foot-9. Kevin Marchessault, Brayden Point, and a dozen forwards demonstrate the same trend at other positions.

Andrae is not being asked to run the Norris race. He is being asked to play 14 to 16 minutes a night on a bottom pair. In that role, his mobility is a bigger asset than his frame is a liability. His five-on-five expected-goal share of 51.8 per cent on last year's Philadelphia team — a group that gave up chances by the bushel — is a real number. Put him behind a Toronto forecheck that keeps play moving forward, and that number rises.

The tactical piece Toronto needs to sort is who he plays next to. The most sensible pairing is with a right-shot, physical defender who can cover the front of the net when Andrae steps up. Philippe Myers, on a rehab-and-prove-it type deal, is one candidate. Timothy Liljegren, on the right side, is another. What Toronto cannot do is pair him with Marshall Rifai, another mobile puck-mover — that pair would leak against any competent forecheck.

What his ceiling actually looks like

Nobody honest thinks Emil Andrae is a top-four defender. That is not the pitch. The pitch is a stable, mobile, cap-friendly third-pair contributor who can play 15 minutes a night on either side, kill penalties in a pinch, and give a coach a real option when the veterans need a night off.

Compared to what the third pair looked like on this team a year ago, that is a real upgrade. It is also the sort of quiet, structural add that Chayka's summer has been full of — smaller than the Bobrovsky signing, smaller than the McKenna pick, and every bit as important to the season not slipping in November.