The Toronto Maple Leafs have reached that familiar mid-season crossroads where clarity feels just close enough to touch, yet still frustratingly out of reach. A strong run has lifted them back into the playoff conversation and restored some belief, but the underlying questions haven’t gone away.
Are the Leafs finally finding their identity, or are they riding a stretch that won’t hold up under tougher competition?
Injuries, lineup turnover, coaching changes and uneven play have made this one of the strangest Leafs seasons in recent memory.
With the trade deadline looming and the playoffs no longer a distant abstraction, this is the right moment to take stock. Here are 10 questions about the Leafs — and the best answers we have right now.
1. Is the Leafs’ hot streak who they really are?
It’s closer to who they are than what you saw at the start of the season, anyway. A lot was different to start the year with Marner gone, wasn’t it? The additions of Nicolas Roy, Dakota Joshua, Matias Maccelli, and Easton Cowan rearranged the parts of every line. Brandon Carlo was battling an injury, Matthews was still not quite himself, and Joseph Woll was absent, so it took some time to find themselves.
The team they are today, starting fresh out of the gate, they wouldn’t be where they are today in the standings, of course. But a lot of teams can make that claim. To answer the question more directly: no, they’re not a team that’s going to win eight out of every 10 games. They’ve played some tomato cans, and they still need a lot to go right from here. But you can only beat who you play, and they did that for a good run there.
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2. Do the underlying numbers like the Leafs?
No, absolutely not, mostly quite the opposite. But for the first time, you can dig up some positives. The Leafs have been quite bad by shot attempts and expected goals this season, and even over their hot streak, it wasn’t great.
But part of that is that they were leading a lot of games over that time, which brings us to a real problem they’ve had once they get ahead: they stop playing, park the bus, and just try to defend. With that, shot attempts against shoot up, and so at the end of the game, they’ll have won, but the numbers say they got caved in. The score created incentive structures that they didn’t handle well.
But when the score has been tied or within one, they’ve been much better, and in some areas have carried the play. Things are trending much better all over, but they’re in a tough stretch of games now.
3. Should they add at the deadline, or re-stock the cupboards?
It’s tough to see a world where the Leafs have prime Auston Matthews and William Nylander, are in (or around) a playoff spot, and they sell off.
The other thing here is, it’s the softest the East has looked in 10 years. If you improved by a couple of effective players and got hot goaltending, you’d be in a huge group of teams of whom you’d say, “you never know”.
One option would be to flip their expiring assets – Bobby McMann, Scott Laughton, Matias Maccelli, those types – and use the assets that come back for players with more term or at least long-term upside.
In the end, I think they add. Which is a little scary, given how little they have to trade.
4. Should they trade for Dougie Hamilton?
Assuming this came with serious retention, I’ll say yes. The Leafs haven’t had a defenceman who can really shoot the puck as a threat on the power play since maybe Jake Gardiner, and he wasn’t anywhere near Hamilton’s upside. When the six-foot-six defenceman is on, he’s an effective puck mover from the backend, where their currentblue line is woefully one-dimensional past Morgan Rielly and Oliver Ekman-Larsson.
It shouldn’t cost much in the way of assets going the other way (they’d probably give him away for the cap space), and the Leafs just need to be way more talented than they currently are, particularly on defence.
5. Should they re-sign Bobby McMann?
The Leafs just can’t keep letting assets walk out the door for nothing; it’s been their biggest drain on talent over the past five years. The cap is going up, he’s under 30, and he’s not going to suddenly get way slower. If you can get a bit of a discount for offering some term, yes, I’d like to see him stay. He’s a quality depth scorer whose physical game is only growing.
6. Should they re-sign Scott Laughton?
Also yes. I know you don’t love the idea of giving McMann and Laughton like four million each, but this guy is a penalty kill dynamo, he can play up and down your lineup (if the coach would let him) and someone who has so much of what the Leafs often lack (passion, want, competitiveness).
If you look at their cap picture for next year, there’s room for these guys. Yes, they’d need to make other moves to improve in other ways. But I just don’t think they’re better for letting these two go (barring some really clever maneuvering that I’m skeptical they’re able to pull off).
7. Is Matthews back-back?
Confirmed. We had a chat about it on our show, where I was openly exasperated about … where has it all been? How did it all suddenly come back?
After some time to think, I’ll say: he was unequivocally hampered by injury last year. Like, badly. He did his best, which somehow inspired critique rather than praise because they weren’t open about what was going on. A lot of stars just wouldn’t have played at times when he dressed last year. So that’s last year.
This year, it’s tougher to say. Some other nagging injuries? That it suddenly got better post-Marc Savard’s firing … was it tied there somehow? Did he just need a run of games to get into the appropriate game shape? Finally getting comfortable with linemates? Or the most likely answer, some combination of all these things?
Whatever saw him go away, I can confirm that he is absolutely back-back. The tell-tale sign for me is the takeaways, as he’s back to lifting sticks and yoinking pucks back to stay on offence. He’s threatening hard to the net with the puck, becoming a handful again, and obviously, ripping that trademark pull-and-snap release.
8. Should they trade one of their three goalies?
This is related to some of the above trade questions. If all three are healthy and looking good, you can send Dennis Hildeby back to the Toronto Marlies and just carry on. But he also looks like an NHL goalie now, and if Anthony Stolarz is back, he’s a proven commodity, and teams out there need goaltending. Either could very well be a part of a package to bring someone back after the Olympic break.
Now, should they? I guess it depends on what you believe Hildeby is going to be. I’m not sold he’s some great starter in wait, so the “should” depends entirely on what the offer is, but I’d certainly be listening.
9. Is the power play fixed?
It still looks only fine, and I’m not sold on any power play that asks Matias Maccelli to lug the puck up the ice and Morgan Rielly to be the quarterback is going to be an above-average unit. It’s “fixed” in that it doesn’t look like the league’s worst anymore, but they’re still not consistently threatening enough.
10. Do they have a chance in playoffs?
Their game against Colorado was their current ceiling, and if you can play to that four times in seven games, sure, they absolutely do. Part of that analysis is based on not being too afraid of any team in the East as a juggernaut, and hockey being weird. They’ve got the goaltending to surprise some teams, too.
In a weird year, there’s still a lot to be decided, which is a pleasant change from the years we know their seed and opponent by Christmas. Fun times ahead.
