It’s not every year your team enters the season with a legitimate chance to contend for the Stanley Cup, so Toronto Maple Leafs fans should be excited about the season ahead. Numerous betting sites have them as the Cup favourite, or at least in the group of teams with a legit chance, so it’s fair to enter the season with hope.
Now, those top-end outcomes hinge on a few crucial storylines, and how they play out. If they break wrong, the Leafs may experience the same result as the past half-dozen years, or worse. But if they break right … if, if, if, if …
Let’s take a lot at those crucial storylines. Ten of ‘em, to be exact.
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How many NHL starting goalies do the Leafs have: zero, one, or two?
Ilya Samsonov was taken through arbitration by the team, signed a one-year contract for $3.55 million, and is being tapped as the guy to bring home the aforementioned Stanley Cup for them despite being an .898 save percentage guy in last year’s playoffs, where he was a negative-1.3 “goals above expected” in those nine playoff games (meaning below replacement level).
Now, he had a great regular season — he was a .919 save percentage guy with 27 wins in 42 starts — and I thought he was better in the playoffs than those numbers above show. But if it ain’t him, well, allow me to remind you that the next guy, ol’ Joseph Woll, has only started 15 NHL games.
The Leafs like Woll, and I can see his potential too, but at this point it’s yet unclear if the team has a legit number one NHL goalie. Or if they have two.
Or gulp, none.
How does the defence get re-shaped by playoffs?
Morgan Rielly is a franchise tentpole and has an extremely reasonable salary for his abilities. Jake McCabe makes bargain bin dollars (just two million for this year and next after Chicago retained the other half) to be a really solid second pair guy, and he plays a tough game, so he’ll be around.
But after that, this D-corps could go in any direction by playoffs. Treliving has been willing to move off TJ Brodie in the past, and the usually steady D-man is in the last year of his deal. John Klingberg’s deal expires after this year. So does Mark Giordano’s. So does Timothy Liljegren’s.
And frankly, none of those guys past Brodie are exactly “must-have” guys when you look at what the playoffs require. I think they’ll be at least two bodies different back there by playoffs, maybe three.
Will the PK and defensive play in general be improved?
The Leafs lost a fleet of reliable penalty kill players over the past couple years — guys like Justin Holl and Alex Kerfoot and Sam Lafferty and Pierre Engvall and Luke Schenn and Ilya Mikheyev and Ondrej Kase and on and on. They went from 8th in PK% to 12th last year. This year they’re talking about trying Auston Matthews on the PK, and the D will have to pick up Holl’s heavy workload in those minutes.
I just wrote about their question marks in net, and their question marks on D. It’s also worth noting that a line of Max Domi-John Tavares-Willy Nylander isn’t exactly defensively stout, while the third line features two rookies, so they may make some mistakes.
The overall point is that the Leafs were 7th in goals against per game last season. Can they match that defensive quality despite the headwinds?
Can Auston Matthews re-establish form?
If the Leafs are Cup contenders, they can’t have their superstar who won a Hart Trophy at age 24 be a 40-goal guy, while the league leader in goals is scoring 64. Chalk up last year’s “mere 40” to injuries and bad luck and whatever else, they’ll need him to be a 50-as-the-floor guy this year, on top of getting himself back into the Selke conversation. It’s a big ask, but at 26 and having won an MVP before signing the NHL’s single biggest AAV contract this summer, it’s a fair one.
Can they actually win the Atlantic Division outright for a change?
A lot has been made about the Bruins losing a handful of valuable players, while some expect their goaltending to regress. Tampa Bay is without Vasilevskiy, and has gotten thinner. During this whole run of “Leafs could win the Cup with this core,” the only time they won the division was during the weird COVID North Division year, not in any real campaign. If they really believe it’s the playoffs that matter, winning the division would sure give them a head start on having success there.
Will William Nylander re-sign and will he play centre?
I didn’t want to lead with this one because it’s been so heavily discussed, but it’s undeniably a key storyline. I think they sign him before Christmas. But if not, Treliving will be in a tough spot with the Leafs’ offensively gifted star — he’s talked about not letting him just walk, as Johnny Gaudreau did from Calgary.
If the Leafs send Minten down after nine games (more on that in a second), as many expect them too, that will likely begin Willy’s trial at centre, which would clarify if they need to add a centre or not. These are big questions the team needs answers to over the next few months.
How long can Fraser Minten hang around for? Can he actually help the Leafs?
Fraser Minten was not supposed to start at centre in Game 1, William Nylander was. But the kid forced the team’s hand, which begs the question: can he do that for long enough that they conclude it’s their permanent solution? It seems hard to fathom right now, but he keeps doing the unfathomable.
Players like Minten often get a crack on lesser teams in bad need of real players, and even when they struggle, the team lets them play through it and develop. The Leafs are not at that stage so it just won’t happen with them. He’ll have to show that he can not just play, but also contribute positively — a big ask for a young centre.
Can John Klingberg find a role?
It’s an upstream swim for Klingberg out of the gates. The Leafs powerplay was second-best in the NHL last season, so can he really improve it? If not, it’s a little like the Office Space line “What would you say you do here?” Would the Leafs be content with a second pair zone-exit and zone-entry specialist for the team? (Maybe that helps McCabe spend more time at the other end of the rink, which would be good.)
With an expiring contract, he’ll have a few months to show he fits in in some way. Right now it’s hard to see where or how, but it isn’t impossible.
And finally,
Can Matthew Knies become important?
Early in the playoffs, whatever line had Knies felt like they had a chance to score. He moved the needle in a positive direction in the toughest conditions before his injury. With a little more room in the regular season, and that experience in his back pocket, can he be a guy who puts up 40-50 points as a rookie? That would go a long way to making this forward group one of the NHL’s best.
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Each player has their own storyline. Can John Tavares keep up his point-per-game pace, can Mitch Marner have a big year before he’s eligible to re-sign another contract, can Timothy Liljgren become a top-four quality D-man?
But as the Leafs go, getting positive answers to the above 10 will go furthest towards answering not just what they’ll be in playoffs, but what they’ll be by late February when it’s time to make moves to patch their holes.
The books may have them as Cup favourites or near to it, but like all teams, they need some things to break their way to see their ultimate potential through to fruition.
