The Maple Leafs needed major change this summer. They haven’t gotten it yet - The Athletic

Oct 25, 2024

There are still more than two months left in the offseason.

A lot of time, in theory anyway, for the Toronto Maple Leafs to still change their roster.

As GM Brad Treliving noted, “We don’t play till October.”

Though with the free-agent market mostly picked through and a Mitch Marner trade looking unlikely, perhaps this is it.

Advertisement

Treliving and the Leafs certainly changed their team at the outset of free agency, bringing in Chris Tanev, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Jani Hakanpää, and Anthony Stolarz, while re-signing Max Domi, Timothy Liljegren, and Matt Murray, and also extending Joseph Woll.

The question I’ve been mulling in the hours since: Did they change enough after another playoff disappointment — and in a way that’s truly meaningful? The answer I keep coming back to is no.

Most of the group that lost in the first round last spring appears to be coming back: Fourteen of the 20 who dressed in Game 7, plus, Woll, Bobby McMann, Ryan Reaves, and (maybe), Nick Robertson.

The exceptions: Ilya Lyubushkin, Joel Edmundson, Ilya Samsonov, Noah Gregor, Tyler Bertuzzi, Martin Jones, as well as TJ Brodie, who played only one game against the Bruins, and Mark Giordano, who didn’t play at all.

All the change, all the money spent in free agency, came on the back end and in goal. On the whole, the Leafs look better in both departments.

Tanev for Lyubushkin; Ekman-Larsson for Edmundson; Hakanpää (maybe) for Brodie/Giordano; Stolarz for Samsonov.

All of them look like upgrades.

This now looks like a Treliving defence. Big. Long. Mean. The smallest guy in the bunch, if he returns, is Liljegren at 6-foot-1 and 190 pounds. Tanev and Ekman-Larsson are each 6-foot-2 and Hakanpää is a giant at 6-foot-7.

The Leafs have been trying to find the sweet spot between having defenders who can, well, defend, and defenders who can also get the puck into the hands of their talented forwards.

This group is a better attempt at that balance.

Craig Berube and Mike Van Ryn can go in a lot of different directions with this bunch.

“You’ve got some puck movers, you’ve got some size, you’ve got some penalty killing,” Treliving said. “I think the addition of Oliver gives you another option on the power play. We’ve got lefties, righties.”

Advertisement

More optionality than before, though if Hakanpää can’t play, the Leafs still have more lefties than righties and one, in Liljegren, they’re not particularly fond of (to this point). They failed to come up with a second surefire righty to play in the top four after Tanev, missing out on Matt Roy, who went to Washington on a seven-year deal with a cap hit of $5.75 million.

With Tanev and Roy, the Leafs would have had a much sturdier 1-2 combo on the right side.

Tanev is nonetheless a lock to team up with Morgan Rielly on the No. 1 pair, and a good fit there. That twosome figures to play heavy minutes against opposing top lines, not unlike how the Leafs used to deploy Rielly and Brodie once upon a time.

After that, all bets are off. The Leafs aren’t set on anything.

They entered the offseason intent on moving Jake McCabe back to the left side next season and that’s still possible if Hakanpää is healthy, or Ekman-Larsson slides from left to right instead, or Liljegren gets a more legitimate look in the top four.

Rielly — TanevMcCabe — LiljegrenEkman-Larsson — Hakanpää

Or, perhaps McCabe simply remains on the right and reconnects with Simon Benoit, leaving Ekman-Larsson to play the left alongside one of the two righties, Hakanpää or Liljegren.

Rielly — TanevEkman-Larsson — Hakanpää/LiljegrenBenoit — McCabe

Ekman-Larsson’s four-year deal, with a $3.5 million cap hit, feels like a real overreach, especially when you consider that Florida got him for one year, at $2.25 million, last summer. He averaged 15.5 minutes a game during the Panthers’ Cup run, playing mostly on their third pair and, occasionally, their No. 1 power-play unit.

His regular-season numbers — nine goals, 32 points — were essentially equal to former Leaf Erik Gustafsson (six goals, 31 points), who signed a two-year deal with Detroit with a $2 million cap hit.

Advertisement

Dmitry Kulikov, Ekman-Larsson’s partner on defence in Florida, got a four-year deal with a cap hit of $1.15 million.

Ian Cole, coming off a strong year in Vancouver, signed a one-year deal worth $3.1 million in Utah.

Edmundson also got four years and a $3.85 million cap hit from the Kings, so there’s that. And perhaps when the Leafs fell short on Roy and opted not to spend on the other big-fish free agents, they pivoted to the more established and known commodity in Ekman-Larsson.

“I know we would all like them at one year and $400,000,” Treliving said. “That’s just not reality.”

There’s a history here: Treliving was part of the Coyotes front office that drafted Ekman-Larsson with the sixth pick in the 2009 draft and watched him develop into a fringe Norris Trophy contender.

He’s not that guy anymore. But the Leafs might point to Ekman-Larsson’s solid postseason and how well he performed early in the regular season when the Panthers were down Aaron Ekblad and Brandon Montour and needed him to step into a large role.

For about a month, Ekman-Larsson averaged almost 24 minutes per game, including one 28-minute outing and three more of 26-plus. The Panthers won his five-on-five minutes (actual goals and expected) and Ekman-Larsson slid into first-unit duties on the power play and penalty kill. He produced four goals and 10 points in those 16 games.

Which makes you wonder if the Leafs believe Ekman-Larsson can handle a second-pair load next season and not the third-pairing look he had for the bulk of last year.

The Leafs GM brushed off age-related concerns, noting that, “the first thing to go on a player usually is the mobility, is the skating. (But) he’s a fluid player. Ultimately, at the end of the day, we were comfortable with the four-year term.”

Ekman-Larsson mostly played secondary roles on Florida’s power play and penalty kill (hardly at all on the PK front in the playoffs) and figures to do the same with the Leafs. He’s a substantial upgrade on Edmundson in the puck distribution department and an alternative to Rielly and Liljegren on the power play.

Advertisement

The Leafs also like that he plays with an edge.

Hakanpää’s health is a major question mark because of a knee issue that kept him out of the playoffs. If he can play, he and Tanev will be major upgrades to the penalty kill.

Hakanpää played top-pair minutes on Dallas’ top-10 penalty kill last season, and like Tanev, was a member of a team more generally that was among the very best defensively in the NHL.

The Leafs were wise to avoid a gigantic contract for Nikita Zadorov (six years, $5 million cap hit), paying a fraction of the price ($1.5 million cap hit) and term (two years) for the possibility of Hakanpää.

I like the bet.

And yet, with the exception of Liljegren (25) and Benoit (26 in September), this crew is old. Tanev will be 35 in December. Ekman-Larsson will be 33 when the season starts. Hakanpää is 32. McCabe will be 31 in October.

Even Rielly will be 31 when the playoffs get underway next spring.

That would be fine if the commitments weren’t so long.

When the 2026-27 season gets underway, for instance, the Leafs might still be paying $15.5 million combined to an almost 37-year-old Tanev, a 35-year-old Ekman-Larsson, and a nearly 33-year-old Rielly.

It would be a huge development for the Leafs if Liljegren (again, assuming they keep him) finally makes a leap into Rasmus Andersson territory and Benoit continues his ascent because the rest of the group otherwise isn’t on the upswing and could slip fast if age-related decline sets in for Tanev and/or Ekman-Larsson sooner than expected.

Adding a younger, more consequential upgrade on the back end, in addition to Tanev, would have been preferable to spreading the dollars around like they did.

The Leafs might have taken the money that was spent on Ekman-Larsson and Domi, for instance, just over $7 million combined, and signed Brady Skjei, a 30-year-old who can legitimately affect the game in every department and who signed for seven years ($7 million cap hit) in Nashville.

Advertisement

The Leafs’ best all-around defenceman is still … Rielly?

In goal, the Leafs are betting on Woll to stay healthy and begin his reign as the team’s No. 1. They didn’t have much of a choice but to bet (though not necessarily extend) after falling short in their bid for Jacob Markstrom. If Woll is the real deal, Stolarz should be perfectly fine as a backup at two years and a $2.5 million cap hit — though it remains to be seen how he’ll perform with a much bigger workload than the one he grew accustomed to playing behind John Gibson and Sergei Bobrovsky the past few seasons.

His starts in the last three seasons: 23, 12, 24.

“He doesn’t have a lot of experience,” Treliving said of Woll, who signed a three-year extension on July 1, “but we think his development curve and his upside is tremendous. How do we partner him with somebody to give him the best support? As we looked around the market, Anthony really was a player that we focused on, and we were happy to get a deal done.”

The forward group is clearly weaker at the moment. It’s the same actually, minus Bertuzzi.

The Leafs have time still to address it, though perhaps only in a substantial way through trade at this point. Treliving kinda sorta hinted at that possibility when discussing the depth on defence. “It opens up different options for us as we move forward here in the summer,” he said.

The obvious candidate for such a move, now that he’s signed and offers some cost certainty to other teams, is Liljegren. But what’s he really fetching and where can the Leafs spend his money in free agency now?

The Leafs will have to count on internal growth from Matthew Knies and Bobby McMann (who isn’t as young as you might think; he turned 28 in June) and maybe even Easton Cowan — though Treliving cautioned against expecting the latter.

Advertisement

“We think they’re great young players,” he said, “but we certainly don’t want to put them in a position to fail.”

From the sounds of it, the Leafs weren’t all that close to bringing Bertuzzi back. He couldn’t wait for them to sort things out on defence and bolted to Chicago on a four-year deal, with a cap hit of $5.5 million.

The Leafs didn’t add any of the available centres and weren’t able to win help on the wing with David Perron, Viktor Arvidsson or Jeff Skinner. There was no value buy here, not yet. The Leafs haven’t gotten bigger or heavier up front either, nor added more expertise on the penalty kill. They’re just … the same.

That includes the return of Domi, who can at least move around the lineup and inject some flavour into the offence.

I don’t love four years for a small-ish 29-year-old (he’ll be 30 next March) who isn’t a plus defensively and who had only an OK postseason. But the cap hit of $3.75 million is fine and will be less of a problem as the cap rises and Domi enters his 30s. He gives the Leafs another much-needed option at centre, maybe even the second-line centre spot if Berube chooses to move John Tavares down the lineup or onto the wing. (I haven’t given up hope of seeing William Nylander move to the middle.)

Third-line centre for Domi seems most likely, unless the Leafs are content to keep Pontus Holmberg there again or try David Kämpf again.

The likeliest look feels oh so familiar:

Knies — Matthews — MarnerMcMann — Tavares — NylanderCowan/Robertson — Domi — JärnkrokDewar — Kämpf — Holmberg/Reaves

Domi figures to land back on Matthews’ right wing at some point, which would allow them to move Marner back onto Tavares’ wing (a combo that didn’t deliver any offence in the playoffs, mind you).

Will it be enough? It doesn’t feel like it, especially if Nick Robertson is dealt. The centre position remains a weak point after Matthews, especially with Tavares entering his age-34 season.

More importantly: Where will the goals come from after Matthews and Nylander?

The Leafs scored a ton of them last regular season, but that was with Auston Matthews producing one of the greatest goal-scoring seasons of all time that he’s unlikely to repeat. This team scored just 12 goals in seven playoff games and lost Bertuzzi, who had the fifth-most goals on the team (21) during the regular season.

Advertisement

A better power play would make a difference obviously and that’s what Marc Savard was brought in for. So might the full-time presence of this version of McMann, who didn’t play at all in the playoffs because of an injury.

But really, barring a Marner trade that seems unlikely but not impossible, the Leafs will be counting on their stars to step up and produce when it matters. That feels like the most overlooked part of their offseason to this point: The Leafs are kinda heading toward running it back where it matters most … again!

The shape of the team is more or less the same at this moment. There’s been no sledgehammer, only more tinkering around the edges, with a beefier, better-rounded defence. Matthews, Marner, Nylander, Tavares and Rielly all look to be coming back for a seventh straight season together — again, barring a trade.

It’s important not to lose sight of that after all these signings.

The Leafs opted not to take a firmer, hard-line approach with Marner or Tavares. The thinking was that doing so wouldn’t be productive. What if they drew a line in the sand, say, with one or both of Marner and Tavares and couldn’t find a trade that worked for them?

The problem with that is they leave themselves resigned to the likelihood of the status quo. That, or hope that some team comes along and makes an attractive offer before October. (Again: Not impossible.)

It’s not been a bold “we will change in a major way no matter what” kind of offseason, not like what Tampa has done after two straight first-round exits. The Lightning let franchise icon Steven Stamkos walk in free agency, replaced him with Jake Guentzel, swapped out Mikhail Sergachev for Ryan McDonagh and J.J. Moser on the back end.

It was a radical attempt to remake their team not long after they went to three straight Stanley Cup Finals, winning two.

Advertisement

Of course, the Leafs are limited by the no-movement clauses of their stars. But they don’t get a free pass on that, not with how foreseeable this was last summer.

The Leafs did change the coach and have upgraded the defence in the image of that coach and GM especially. The look of the team though feels all too familiar.

The Leafs appear set to hope, yet again, that history doesn’t repeat itself.

— Stats and research courtesy of Hockey Reference, Cap Friendly, and Natural Stat Trick

(Top photo: Steve Russell / Toronto Star via Getty Images)

Subscribe to The Athletic for in-depth coverage of your favorite players, teams, leagues and clubs. Try a week on us.

Jonas Siegel is a staff writer on the Maple Leafs for The Athletic. Jonas joined The Athletic in 2017 from the Canadian Press, where he served as the national hockey writer. Previously, he spent nearly a decade covering the Leafs with AM 640, TSN Radio and TSN.ca. Follow Jonas on Twitter @jonassiegel