Brad Treliving is rolling the dice.
Headed into a new campaign once again heaped with expectation, and once again trailing a post-season of disappointment, the Toronto Maple Leafs general manager has taken to shaking things up some.
Out is head coach Sheldon Keefe, replaced by Craig Berube in May. Out is John Tavares as the club’s front-and-centre leader, the veteran relinquishing the ‘C’ in August, to be stitched instead onto Auston Matthews’ chest. The blue line’s been thrown some new faces, and the netminding tandem behind them, too.
But up front, where the club’s salary has pooled, the lineup remains dotted with question marks. Tops among them? Who leads the pack at left wing, where the departure of hard-nosed Tyler Bertuzzi has left Toronto with a crew of inexperienced options hoping for career years.
On Wednesday, Treliving added another wild-card — and perhaps a long-shot solution — to that mix, with the club announcing that veteran Max Pacioretty will join the team on a Professional Tryout, as long rumoured.
It’s something of a gamble, no doubt. The 35-year-old is coming off multiple seasons hampered by injuries, a pair of Achilles tears limiting him to just 52 games over the past two seasons since leaving Vegas. And yet, big-picture, there’s little question the stakes skew in Toronto’s favour.
A quick glance at the crew Pacioretty will be contending with on the left side of Toronto’s offence should make that clear enough. While the Maple Leafs’ forward corps is led by its quartet of big-ticket stars — Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Mitch Marner and John Tavares — here’s how their lineup breaks down at left wing: Matthew Knies (83 career NHL games), Bobby McMann (66 games), Pontus Holmberg (91 games), Nick Robertson (87 games), and fourth-liner Connor Dewar (190 games).
Enter, Pacioretty — who has more big-league games to his name (902) than all of those other left-side options combined.
Whether health permits him to show glimpses of what he was at his best during those 902 spins around the sheet remains to be seen. Either way, there’s no doubt that, in his mid-30s, the former Montreal Canadiens captain is not the perennial 30-goal threat he once was.
Still, after getting back into an NHL lineup late last season, Pacioretty collected a respectable 23 points through 47 games in a Washington Capitals sweater. Just two years ago, he put up 19 goals and 37 points in 39 games during his final run in Vegas at age 33.
Best-case scenario, a summer of health and rest — as opposed to recovery from Achilles operations — allows the veteran to find his footing early, and claim a top-six spot as a trigger-man for Matthews or Tavares.
Or, on the other side of that coin, he slots into the bottom-six group, likely chips in with equal or better production than the club saw from Holmberg or Dewar last season, and helps mentor that young crew of wingers around him. And should injury issues creep up again, and take Pacioretty off the ice, the squad simply finds itself back where it already was.
For Treliving, the key is the cost. Toronto won’t be shelling out the $7 million-per-season Carolina and Vegas were for Pacioretty’s services just a few years ago, or likely even the $2 million the Caps did last season. With the club’s cap space dwindling as the season approaches, any addition to fill holes in the lineup needed to be a low-cost dice roll like this one — a low-risk, high-reward swing that could address a need if everything happens to fall the Maple Leafs’ way.
Of course, down the hall, for the other left-wingers who sport Maple Leafs sweaters, the addition complicates things.
For young Knies and McMann, who each took a step last season, the presence of the six-time 30-goal-scorer chips away at their chances of a top-six role. And should Pacioretty earn a regular spot, as expected, the ramifications will be felt more acutely further down the lineup, where two of Holmberg, Dewar, or Robertson will be pushed to the press box.
That’s surely an especially ominous hypothetical for Robertson, who made his desire to leave Toronto for more opportunity elsewhere clear, but ultimately re-signed on Tuesday after being assured by his new coach that he’ll get a fair shot. A day later, it seems he still will, but the competition just got stiffer.
If there’s any risk in throwing Pacioretty into the mix, it might not be with the veteran’s own performance alone, but there, at the lineup’s fringes.
Should it all fall Toronto’s way, and the 16-year-vet is able to add a new dimension to the Maple Leafs’ offence, then it’ll all be worth the gamble. But should the club find itself trading away a young talent like Robertson to get the former Habs captain into the lineup, or holding another like Easton Cowan back, the looming risk of that lengthy injury history may start to weigh heavier on the Maple Leafs faithful.
