Henry Thrun’s legacy as a Toronto Maple Leaf will already be a positive one. He brought the ill-conceived time of Ryan Reaves in the blue and white to an early end and after the Sharks got a nice deal on Timothy Liljegren last season, Mike Grier returned the favour by taking on the final year of the Reaves contract.
The transaction rids Toronto of $200k of dead cap space that would have occurred if Reaves was sent to the Marlies again this season. That’s a definite positive and if it was left there and if Thrun is simply destined to be put on waivers and sent down the Marlies without much concern about whether there will be a claim or not, most Leafs fans would probably accept that and move on. The thing is, there might be a bit more to Thrun than the lukewarm start to his NHL career demonstrates and he could be an interesting project for the Maple Leafs organization whether it is as depth on the Maple Leafs or through an attempted reboot after time on the Marlies.
Thrun is a 6’2 defenceman that just turned 24 in March. There are some boxes checked there already as Toronto loves size, the blueline needs to work towards getting younger. He isn’t a punishing presence by any means, he is a Harvard lad after all, instead he is a puck mover, an area of need for the Leafs defence. One that at the very least addresses Topi Niemela’s departure from the Marlies for Sweden, and at the best creates some competition amongst Myers, Benoit, and Ekman-Larsson about the best fit on the third pairing.
| Season | GP | G | A | PTS | ATOI | BLK | HIT |
| 2022-23 | 8 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 19:52 | 9 | 4 |
| 2023-24 | 51 | 3 | 8 | 11 | 19:59 | 71 | 26 |
| 2024-25 | 60 | 2 | 10 | 12 | 17:31 | 66 | 43 |
The Sharks are certainly not the Leafs and the fact that they were scaling back Thrun’s ice time in 2024-25 from his usage in 23-24 shows that he is not a player that is where they needed to him to be. That’s fine for the Maple Leafs though who really don’t need him to be more than depth curiosity, at least to start. Most of Thrun’s icetime in 2024-25 was sheltered by the Sharks, with him matching primarily against bottom six forwards, it would be nice to say the results were good in that situation but the reality is that his on ice numbers are terrifyingly bad no matter who he was playing against, largely due to the quality of the Sharks lineup around him. It will be interesting to see what Thrun can do with a lineup capable of absorbing his adjustment to pro hockey rather than throwing him into the deep end with only 18 games of AHL experience coming out of college.
Looking at Thrun’s defensive partners in 2024-25, there wasn’t much consistency. He played with Cody Ceci, he played with Jan Ruuta, and saw some time with Timothy Liljegren, as well as numerous other Sharks defencemen (although they all had less than 100 minutes TOI with Thrun.) Those partners don’t inspire a lot of confidence in Toronto when it comes to propping up defensive partners, and giving Thrun a clean slate and treating him like the captain of the Harvard hockey team that has spent two seasons trying to crack an NHL lineup instead of taking his time with the Sharks at face value might be the fairest approach with Henry.
| Season | GP | CA/60 | CF% | GA/60 | GF% | xGA/60 | xG% | On-Ice SV% | PDO |
| 20222023 | 8 | 60.15 | 46.04 | 3.79 | 43.75 | 3.04 | 46.72 | 88.00 | 0.989 |
| 20232024 | 51 | 66.77 | 42.85 | 3.24 | 36.11 | 3.03 | 40.61 | 90.13 | 0.982 |
| 20242025 | 60 | 68.98 | 42.10 | 3.36 | 36.14 | 3.05 | 38.66 | 89.48 | 0.974 |
If there is a true case for cutting Thrun some slack on his career numbers to date, look no further than the on ice save percentage at 5v5 and the real struggle to experience a 90% save percentage and then remember he isn’t 24. There is time to turn things around. At the very least, he’s got one year left on his deal and Toronto can spend that time learning what they have.
Thrun, although a puck mover, hasn’t seen a lot of time on the powerplay in San Jose. That makes sense as most teams have adopted a 4F1D approach and the Sharks lineup isn’t so thin that using Thrun there with any frequency is justified. He did see regular time on the penalty kill though, as you’d expect a bottom pairing defender to do. That’s not to say he excelled in that role, really none of the Sharks did, but experience is just that.
Thrun’s NHL Edge numbers show that he might have a slightly heavier shot than the current crop of Leafs blueliners and that might allow him to find a niche somewhere down the road with the club, similar to how Conor Timmins would see some powerplay usage. Thrun was a near point per game defenceman at Harvard, the Leafs won’t shut the door to giving him some offensive zone looks that he wasn’t getting in San Jose, assuming he makes the team.
In the event that Thrun doesn’t make the Leafs and is sent to the Marlies, his $1M cap hit will be completely off the books. Additionally, he’ll be reunited with Marshall Rifai, his teammate from Harvard, and Matt Benning, a teammate from San Jose that shared the ice with Thrun for 60+ minutes in 2023 through 2025. That environment and potential icetime available to Thrun might be the best thing for him and the Maple Leafs.
Interestingly enough, Thrun had two fights in 2024-25 compared to the one by Ryan Reaves, so you could also make a case that the Leafs made an upgrade in the pugnacity department. And while there is plenty of reason to be excited about the upside of Thrun, this trade was primarily about the subtraction of Reaves and the Sharks finding a place for someone they would probably lose on waivers in October now that they’ve added Leddy, Orlov, and Klingberg to their blueline.
Data from Natural Stat Trick, Hockey Reference, PuckIQ, NHL Edge, and Elite Prospects
Sponsored by bet365