Every NHL team must submit their final rosters by Monday afternoon to mark the start of the 2026-27 regular season. It's a deadline that everyone is aware of and can't wait to see what exciting young talents make the team out of training camp, and maybe who is suprisingly cut.
With that deadline, Sunday afternoon served as one final opportunity to purge the unwanted players off of your roster and put them on the waiver wire, to then get sent down to the AHL. Several dozens of players were made available for free and it just so happened that there was a bevy of former Toronto Maple Leafs out there.
It almost served as memories of a past era, as we hopefully move into this new one led by John Chayka, Mats Sundin, and Jim Hiller.
Former Maple Leafs are all over the waiver wire
We might run out of breath trying to make our way through the former Leafs who waived at some point this week as all 32 teams set their rosters.
We have forwards Alex Steeves, Sam Lafferty, Dryden Hunt, Sammy Blais, Colin Blackwell, Alex Nylander, Pierre Engvall, Noah Gregor, and Zach Aston-Reese. Okay, let's move to the blue line. Defensemen Henry Thrun, Justin Holl, Calle Rosen, Ilya Lyubushkin, and William Lagesson. In between the pipes, David Rittich and Ilya Samsonov are two netminders who had some time in Toronto, who are now getting sent elsewhere.
There are probably names we're missing, too. Even while writing this, Nick Abruzzesse is someone we know was on the waiver wire earlier this week.
That's a whole lot of former Leafs and it really is a brief look into the recent history of this team and just how painful it has been watching management try and churn out a good team icing players who will eventually end up in this position.
Somewhat painful memories on the waiver wire
There's every type of player coming down the wire. Players like Justin Holl and Ilya Samsonov and Pierre Engvall were truly meant to be something more and were seen as key pieces for the Leafs' future. Certainly not stars or anything, but at the very least players who can serve in a depth role on very good teams and stick around. Especially for Engvall, who was in a fun wave of young talent who we thought could play beneath the Core Four for a while. Now, he just kind of stinks and is on a bad contract.
Even some players like Lyubushkin and Lafferty and Gregor were seen as answers to problems the team faced on their bottom line and were cheap depth. But ultimately, they were just not good enough to really stick around, and clearly not good enough to stick in the NHL either.
Let's just hope that we don't see any of this happening in the coming years. We can't go through another churning of depth talent.
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