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Maple Leafs' goalie-heavy offseason continues with back-to-back draft picks
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- Maple Leafs' goalie-heavy offseason continues with back-to-back draft picks
Maple Leafs' goalie-heavy offseason continues with back-to-back draft picks originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here .
The Toronto Maple Leafs have a lot of goalie action happening this offseason.
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Turns out, the trade of Joseph Woll to the Philadelphia Flyers was just the beginning. On Saturday, they drafted a pair of netminders as part of the 2026 NHL Draft.
The first was actually taken with a selection the Flyers sent to the Leafs in the Woll trade.
That was the No. 85 overall pick. The Maple Leafs used it to pick Juuso Ainasto, a Finnish goalie who played for Jokerit in his home country in 2025-26.
At the U-18 level for Jokerit, he had an 8-3 record with a 1.74 goals against average and a 93.8 save percentage. He was 6-7 at the U-20 level.
Ainasto is listed as standing 6-foot-4.
MORE: What the Gavin McKenna pick means for the Maple Leafs
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Then with the No. 114 overall pick, the next pick the Maple Leafs had, they took Patriks Plumins, another goalie.
He played for Zemgale in the Latvian league in 2025-26 and had a 1.50 goals against average and a 94.7 save percentage.
Plumins also played at the U-18 World Championships for Latvia recently, and they upset the United States during the elimination rounds.
Young goalies are always a tricky evaluation, so there's no guarantee that either of these guys ever gets close to the NHL.
But it also shows Toronto continues to consider the position, which is an important one and has had a decent amount of moving parts in recent years for the Leafs.
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Ainasto and Plumins are both a long way away, but it'll be worth watching to see how they develop going forward.
