KHL MVP & Former Maple Leafs Forward Josh Leivo Has New Team For 2025-26

Monday, August 18, 2025 ,

Josh Leivo, KHL MVP has signed with a new team

Although he was the AHL's Calder Cup MVP in 2022, Josh Leivo was never really able to make his mark in the NHL, including small depth roles in six seasons with his hometown Toronto Maple Leafs. But in the KHL in Russia, Leivo is a massive star, smashing the league's all-time single-season goal mark, and earning KHL MVP honors this past season. 

Now, as a free agent, Leivo is on the move from Ufa Salavat Yulayev, signing with top KHL regular-season team Traktor Chelyabinsk on a one-year contract.

The 32-year-old had his contract terminated by Ufa five days ago, due to visa and financial issues.

“As has already been said, if a player of Josh Leivo’s caliber enters the market, the club needs to react immediately,” said Traktor GM Alexei Volkov. “Over the past two seasons in the KHL, he has become a real star of the league, breaking what seemed to be Sergei Mozyakin’s eternal record and winning the MVP title at the end of the 2024-25 regular season.

“It can be said without a shadow of a doubt that Josh is a real scoring machine,” Volkov described. “His shot can be called elite, his one-timer on the power play and, as they say, is a difference-maker."

That doesn't quite sound like the same Leivo who surpassed 7 goals in a season only once in the NHL (registering 14 in the 2018-19 season with the Leafs and Vancouver Canucks), and after a few more unremarkable depth forward roles in Calgary, Carolina, and St. Louis, decided to head to Russia in the summer of 2023. 

The move has, as Volkov noted, turned Leivo into a star. He started to build slowly in his first season with Ufa, with 15 goals and 38 points in 40 games. This past season, however, he was off the charts with a big-time breakthrough, with a KHL record 49 goals to go along with 80 points in 62 games, with a +26 rating. 

Leivo was a third-round pick by the Maple Leafs in the 2011 NHL Entry Draft.

Photo Credit: TheAHL, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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