The offseason is quieting down, which means it’s the perfect time for us to take a look under the hood of the revamped (sort of!) Toronto Maple Leafs and see how the roster is shaping up for the 2024-25 season.
Let’s dive in.
Forwards
About the only thing here that feels like an absolute lock, as far as slotting goes, is Auston Matthews in the No. 1 centre spot.
All bets are off otherwise on how new Leafs coach Craig Berube structures this bunch. Sheldon Keefe’s tendencies grew to be familiar. Berube might have very different ideas. He could go in a whole whack of directions with a forward group that hasn’t changed at all, save for the departure of Tyler Bertuzzi.
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Among the bigger decisions is whether to reunite Matthews with Mitch Marner (again, assuming Marner indeed returns next season, which seems like a foregone conclusion at this point). It was ironic that the Keefe era came to an end this past spring with Matthews and Marner playing separately (for the most part) given that one of the more significant moves of his tenure was bringing the two stars together in the first place.
What drove the split was Matthews shining without Marner’s help. Most of that came with Max Domi and Bertuzzi. Matthews produced an eye-popping 3.2 goals and 4.9 points per 60 minutes at five-on-five playing with Domi (206 minutes).
For context, Matthews produced 1.6 goals and 2.8 points per 60 with Marner.
The sample size with Domi is much, much smaller, and the Matthews-Marner connection was noticeably flat early on, but the chemistry between Matthews and Domi was undeniable.
Berube can hook them back up if he wants to. Heck, he could even team the two of them up with Marner. Keefe wanted to get a look at that threesome, but never got around to it save for the odd shift here or there.
If Marner isn’t playing with Matthews, where is he playing? He spent the playoffs with John Tavares and while the line excelled defensively, it was punchless at the other end. Over the past three regular seasons, the Leafs have a 17-goal advantage at five-on-five in Marner’s minutes with Tavares, with a solid, if unspectacular, 53 percent expected-goals mark. The connection has been pretty blah for the most part.
Part of the where-to-place Domi question mark is centre-related. Namely, do the Leafs feel they need to play him at centre after not adding to the position this summer?
Domi ended last season at right wing but spent most of the year in the middle. Playing him on the wing left the Leafs woefully thin offensively in the bottom six. Just one measly goal, in fact, came from lines three and four in the playoffs.
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Move Domi to centre and the Leafs have a more legitimate shot at creating offence beyond the top two lines (but with the underlying weakness defensively that comes with having Domi, a minus defender, in the middle).
Last season, the threesome of Domi, Nick Robertson and Calle Järnkrok generated almost four goals per 60 minutes, a robust number. The Leafs outscored teams 12-8 in their minutes. Berube could turn back to that trio next season.
Which brings us to another Berube decision: Whether or not to keep John Tavares in the two-hole at centre in his 16th NHL season.
Very few players continue to play centre, let alone second-line centre for a team with championship aspirations, at this stage of their career.
Had Brad Treliving’s front office added another centre in free agency (or trade), the choice would be a lot easier. But that didn’t happen, so it’s either Tavares there again, Domi punching above his weight class, or my choice for the gig, William Nylander.
Treliving wanted Nylander to play centre last season, only to have Keefe end the experiment before it had a chance to get started. The thinking then holds up now: The Leafs stand to be deeper and more dangerous with Nylander in the middle, whether Tavares stays at the position or not.
A top nine such as this stands to have real potential:
Knies – Matthews – Marner
Domi – Nylander – Järnkrok
Robertson – Tavares – McMann
Sparks flew between Domi and Nylander when they got the odd chance to play together. (They had, err, some problems defensively.)
Berube could even get crazier and give Marner a look with Nylander at centre:
Knies – Matthews – Domi
McMann – Nylander – Marner
Robertson – Tavares – Järnkrok
Keefe never trusted Nylander to play the middle and maybe Berube will feel the same.
To me, it’s worth a long look (longer than two weeks at training camp!), because it not only stands to solve a need in the present but one down the line with Tavares entering the final year of his contract.
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Berube might also consider loading all his best forwards into the top six and returning David Kämpf to third-line duty after a season spent largely on the fourth line. That would greatly limit the offensive potential of that unit though, as would keeping Pontus Holmberg as the 3C, where he finished last season.
Domi – Matthews – Marner
Knies – Tavares – Nylander
McMann – Kämpf – Järnkrok
Dewar – Holmberg – Reaves
The Leafs will almost certainly have to add a centre in-season (though I thought that last season and they failed to do so).
One of the more intriguing figures heading into next season is Matthew Knies. He figures to land a top-six gig at left wing not quite by default, given his mighty impressive playoffs, but close. What would a leap in production look like for a player who had 15 goals and 35 points as a 21-year-old rookie? A 20-goal, 50-point season doesn’t feel out of the question, especially if Knies decides to shoot it a lot more than he did in Year 1.
Knies totalled 115 shots in 80 games last season, or about 1.44 per game, which tied for 258th among NHL forwards who played in at least 50 games. Knies went without even one shot, period, in 19 games, which was almost a quarter of the season. That can’t happen again for a guy with all that size, speed and willingness to get to the net.
Knies will almost certainly play more than 13 minutes and change next season, especially if he nabs regular time on the power play and penalty kill. He should be better equipped for the 82-game grind in Year 2.
The Leafs need real growth from him. Another thing they need is for late-season Bobby McMann (13 goals, 17 points in 30 games) to be a real thing and not just a hot streak.
A spirited camp from Easton Cowan might be enough to earn him a nine-game tryout to begin the season. I won’t be assuming anything, though. The jump from the OHL to NHL is gigantic. Not only are the players much larger, much stronger and exponentially more skilled; the pace is so much quicker.
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Nick Robertson was a rock star in the OHL. Five years later, he’s still struggling to nail down a spot in the lineup.
The NHL is hard.
There’s a path to second-line opportunity for Robertson in the fall depending on how Berube goes about his lineup and how Robertson, assuming he’s around, performs at camp.
Is Ryan Reaves a shoo-in to play for Berube? It feels … likely?
Reaves is one of the few forwards who definitively falls into the “heavy” category. He’ll also be 38 in January and ranks among the league’s slowest players. He averaged only eight minutes per game last season.
Waivers isn’t an impossibility at some point.
Defence
Morgan Rielly and Chris Tanev are about the only lock here.
The Leafs aren’t set on anything after that.
Mike van Ryn will be back running the defence for a second season. The pairing he (and Keefe) reluctantly grew to trust more than any other last season: Simon Benoit and Jake McCabe.
The Leafs front office was inclined to move in a different direction when the offseason started, one that had McCabe moving back to his natural side on the left and Benoit returning to less onerous third-pairing duty.
Alas, the Leafs fell short in their bid for Matt Roy and ended up with only one clearcut top-four righty in Tanev (and one maybe in Jani Hakanpää).
There’s some belief internally that Oliver Ekman-Larsson, a lefty, can play the right side if necessary. Ekman-Larsson started last season on the right, when the Florida Panthers were without Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour.
McCabe performed better on the right than on the left in his first full season as a Leaf.
So one question for Berube and van Ryn boils down to that: Who, if need be, do they prefer on the right — McCabe or Ekman-Larsson? Might they even consider playing the two of them together, knowing they have Benoit-McCabe in their back pocket if that fails?
Rielly – Tanev
McCabe – Ekman-Larsson
Benoit – Liljegren
I might start there — with Ekman-Larsson in the top four — if only to see if the soon-to-be 33-year-old can still handle top-four responsibility (while earning top-four dollars).
One potential wrinkle that would increase the optionality of this bunch is Hakanpää.
If he’s healthy, he’s going to play, whether it’s with McCabe or Ekman-Larsson. A healthy Hakanpää would allow the Leafs to keep both McCabe and Ekman-Larsson on the left, which they would prefer, all things being equal.
Rielly – Tanev
McCabe – Liljegren
Ekman-Larsson – Hakanpää
Benoit
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The 32-year-old Hakanpää spent most of his time in Dallas playing with the smooth Esa Lindell. Maybe that leads to a fit with Ekman-Larsson, which would leave either Benoit or Timothy Liljegren to play with McCabe.
How will Berube proceed with Liljegren, a player this front office was inclined to move this offseason but who also brings legitimate upside to an otherwise old-ish bunch? Liljegren has only played for one head coach in his NHL career and that was Keefe, who never totally trusted him.
He’ll be auditioning for Berube in the fall.
Spiffy underlying numbers for the infrequently-used McCabe-Liljegren pairing — 58 percent expected goals mark — never matched the eye test.
An Ekman-Larsson-Liljegren combo would pack together two of the three best (only?) legitimate puck-movers on one pair. Maybe that’s OK.
There’s a chance Liljegren gets a crack on a second pairing with McCabe. There’s also a chance he ends up as the odd man out when the season begins — if Hakanpää is around and available and Benoit looks like Benoit of last season.
That’s another thing to keep in mind: Unlike last fall, when he arrived at camp as depth-in-case-of-emergency, there are expectations on Benoit now as he begins a new three-year contract.
Goaltenders
The Leafs may try to sell this as a competition between Joseph Woll and Anthony Stolarz at training camp, but they want Woll to be the top dog in the crease. The three-year extension they handed the 25-year-old (after 38 career NHL starts) on July 1 told you everything you needed to know about their ambitions for him.
They think he has a chance to be special.
Fulfilling that upside will require Woll to be in the net more than ever before, something like 45-50 starts beginning next season. Can he handle that kind of workload as far as both health and performance go?
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He’s never done it before.
In his three seasons at Boston College, Woll started 34, 30 and 37 games. With the Marlies, he topped out at 32 appearances, followed by 15, 15 and 21.
Last season, in his first full season as a Leaf, Woll played in only 25 games and started 23. He missed almost three months with a high ankle sprain.
The Leafs are essentially counting on him to double his workload. A lot more will be expected of Stolarz, too. Even if Woll stays healthy and performs well in, say, 50 games as the starter, the Leafs will still need 30ish starts from Stolarz, which is more than he’s ever played in one NHL season.
Experienced crease this is not, though the Leafs will have the uber-experienced, if frequently injured, Matt Murray continuing his comeback bid with the Marlies.
An injury to either Woll or Stolarz will be all it takes for Murray to return to the NHL.
— Stats and research courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Evolving Hockey and Hockey Reference
(Top photo of John Tavares and Auston Matthews: Mark Blinch / NHLI via Getty Images)
