As we enter the dog days of the NHL offseason, the Maple Leafs announced a late-night trade on Thursday: Ryan Reaves is headed to San Jose in exchange for 24-year-old left-shot defenseman Henry Thrun.
The writing was on the wall for Reaves after the Michael Pezzetta addition on July 1, as Brad Treliving filled a similar character/energy depth role up front with a lighter weight but willing fighter in Pezzetta, who has younger and faster legs/superior ability to get home on time on the forecheck. Thrun, at $1 million, comes in below the buriable salary threshold of $1.15 million, whereas Reaves was a couple of hundred thousand over it for one more season.
The move marks the end of a Reaves tenure that never really worked out in Toronto. They largely played him with David Kampf, which made no sense — a defensive stopper paired with a fighter — and it effectively made both players worse.
Reaves tallied eight points in 84 games across two seasons in Toronto. In his first season, he was healthy scratched for a large portion of time; he was also hurt and missed time, and he was vocal about his readiness to play while still on LTIR.
This past season, Reaves completely fell out of favour, fighting only once while providing about zero physicality to go along with zero offense. Brad Treliving and Craig Berube sent him down to the minors to clear cap space at the trade deadline, and we never heard from Reaves again, unless he was appearing on podcasts or receiving a shoutout from Mitch Marner on his way out the door.
As for Thrun, with the additions of Dmitry Orlov and Nick Leddy this summer and a few other left-shot defense prospects pushing for minutes, the Sharks chose to move on from the 24-year-old, whose potential was once well-regarded inside the organization.
“He’s a kid who wants to continue to get better every time he’s on the ice. You see that in the way he prepares. Hockey is his life. It’s everything. He’s put in a lot of work to get to this point, and I don’t see him stopping whatsoever. As a coaching staff, we’re going to continue to challenge him, and I think he accepts that challenge. He embraces it, and I’m going to try to keep and continue to push the envelope of his development.”
– Sharks head coach Ryan Warsofsky
A Massachusetts native who previously played on a Harvard team with former and current Marlies (respectively) in Nick Abruzzese and Marshall Rifai, Thrun was a fourth-round pick of the Ducks in 2019 who never signed with Anaheim and was traded as a prospect to San Jose. As a Shark, he played over 50 games per season in the last two years for a bottom-feeding San Jose team. He hit 20 minutes per night in 2023-24, when he played some power-play minutes and scored two goals (four points) on the man advantage. He’s a combined -45 over his past two seasons in San Jose with ugly underlying metrics, but it’s completely unfair to judge a developing defenseman’s numbers in that kind of a losing/tanking environment.
Thrun’s minutes dropped to 17 and change per night this past season, but once he returned from an injury this past April and the Sharks had already moved out Jake Walman, Vincent Desharnais, and Cody Ceci before the trade deadline, Thrun played over 21 minutes a night in April and scored his second goal of the season in Edmonton.
The 6’2, 210-pound Thrun offers some puck-moving ability and reasonable offensive instincts off the blue line; he’s scored five goals and 25 points in 119 NHL games, and he’s also got two NHL fights to his name. He’ll be in a tough battle to earn regular playing time with left shots Jake McCabe, Morgan Rielly, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and Simon Benoit already on the Leafs‘ depth chart, but OEL has often played on the right in Toronto, and Thrun could challenge for minutes/provide injury insurance for the bottom pairing (Dakota Mermis is also in this mix). Thrun also spent some time on his offside — the right — alongside Walman for a spell last season.
Thrun will be an RFA at season’s end, so he would remain under the team’s control in the 2026 offseason, although he is waiver eligible this Fall. At the current moment, the Leafs have plenty of roster/cap flexibility to carry a few extra NHL bodies and avoid waiver exposure, although plenty could change between now and training camp. They’ve been looking for a little more puck-moving and offensive juice among their blue-line mix, and while Thrun likely won’t move the needle much in those departments as a depth option, he offers a bit of a different dynamic in those areas of the game than a Benoit type.
In exchange for a 38-year-old Reaves, it’s a better value return than a throwaway late draft pick — a small win for Brad Treliving that helps clear a little more cap space on the margins in the process. The Leafs currently have over $5 million of available cap space with a full 23-man roster, and that’s without waiving fully buriable players such as Philippe Myers, Thrun, or Pezzetta.
