Whatever Happened to ex-Maple Leafs and ex-Oilers Ennis

Eight years ago, when I was just getting started writing about hockey, one of my very first posts was about Tyler Ennis — a guy most Toronto Maple Leafs fans probably weren't thinking twice about. It was 2018, and the Maple Leafs had just landed John Tavares but hadn't yet re-signed William Nylander. And Ennis showed up and played well.

Here was this quiet, unassuming winger filling in and actually making the team better. I remember asking a pretty bold question back then: was Ennis, on a $650,000 deal, actually more valuable to Toronto that season than Nylander would've been? Auston Matthews himself was praising the guy, saying Ennis was shifty, saw the ice well, and always found him in open space. Ennis was holding down the fort on the top line and mentoring young guys like Frederik Gauthier and Josh Leivo on the fourth line, all while nobody outside Toronto was paying much attention.

So, whatever happened to Ennis?

Turns out Ennis had a really solid final stretch to his career. After leaving Toronto, he landed in Ottawa and put up his best offensive season in several seasons. He scored 14 goals and 33 points in 61 games. He got a couple more seasons in with his hometown Oilers before wrapping up his NHL run back in Ottawa in 2021-22.

By the time it was all said and done, Ennis played 700 NHL games across 13 seasons with Buffalo, Minnesota, Toronto, Ottawa, and Edmonton, finishing with 144 goals and 346 points. All in all, that’s a pretty remarkable run for a guy who stood just 5-foot-9 and was doubted for most of his junior career.

After the NHL, Ennis landed in Europe and put up a couple of solid seasons there.

He wasn't quite done after the NHL either. Ennis kept playing overseas after the NHL, spending a season with SC Bern in Switzerland before moving on to Adler Mannheim in Germany. Unfortunately, a serious neck injury during a Champions Hockey League game in November 2023 forced his hand, and he officially retired that January at age 34. He said simply that after trying hard to get healthy, he decided it was time to step away.

One fact I love finding out now: back in 2015, Ennis actually scored a goal in Canada’s gold-medal-winning game at the World Championship.

Ennis hit the news again a few weeks ago.

Two months ago, in July 2026, Ennis made news again, not for hockey, but for something much more personal. He went back to his old Edmonton elementary school, Good Shepherd, to open a time capsule that had been sealed for 25 years. Inside was a VHS tape of him, a third-grader, talking about his dream of playing in the NHL. And he got to stand there as an adult and tell the kids that dream actually came true. He posted about it on social media, calling it an "unforgettable full-circle moment." It even got a reaction from an old Maple Leafs teammate. Auston Matthews jokingly commented, "You tell em about your two eagles?"

So as of right now, that's the most recent public sighting of him — not coaching, not broadcasting, just living life post-retirement in Alberta and getting a really nice moment of reflection on how far that third-grade dream actually took him. [You can see the video of him talking in the third grade at this link.]

I’m still interested in most of the same questions as when I began writing.

Looking back, my post asked whether an unheralded, cheap depth signing could matter as much as a star. Turns out Ennis's whole career kind of answered that question for me before I even knew I'd asked it.