Toronto Maple Leafs: Marlies Add Some Needed Blueline Depth

The Toronto Maple Leafs continue to bolster their depth at every level of the organization.

The Toronto Marlies are smack-dab in the middle of a transitional period.

Following an offseason of significant player movement at both organizational levels, the Maple Leafs’ affiliate could very well enter into next season with a roster that looks borderline unrecognizable from its iterations the previous two years. Those were relatively fluid Marlies teams, with players bucking the normal American League and staying in-house from one year to the next.

This time? Not so much.

Gone are veteran pillars in Vincent LoVerde, Colin Greening, and Chris Mueller – elder statesmen who each filled vital roles for the Marlies both in their forward corps and along the blueline. Prominent young staples will bid their own farewells in 2019-20, too. Calle Rosen – arguably the team’s number one defenceman last season – was traded to Colorado in the Tyson Barrie trade; Trevor Moore is expected to graduate full-time to the Leafs; Michael Carcone followed Nikita Zaitsev and Connor Brown to Ottawa. The list goes on.

Needless to say, there are a number of gaping holes littered throughout the Marlies’ lineup. And the team has now set about filling them, announcing the signings of both Ryan Johnston and Michael Kapla earlier this morning.

The details of either agreement have not yet been specified.

Ryan Johnston

At 27-years-old, Johnston is far from a prospect, and will likely fill the ever-important “veteran’s role” on the Marlies’ blueline occupied most recently by Frank Corrado and Steven Oleksy.

Will Johnston actually play regular minutes in a Marlies uniform? That remains to be seen. The Sudbury-native will be joining the Marlies’ ever-growing crop of RHD – becoming the team’s fifth right-shooting defenceman in a class that includes Timothy Liljegren, Mac Hollowell, Joey Duszak, and Jesper Lindgren, as well – while further bolstering a positional group which struggled last season when Liljegren missed nearly 30 games from a high-ankle sprain.

When it comes to the realm of NHL experience, Johnston’s is pretty light. With a total of 10 big league games on his resume to date, all of which were with the Montreal Canadiens between the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons, Johnston spent this past year in the SHL with Mora IK, where his 22 points in 50 games were enough to land him fifth in team scoring. So, not too shabby.

Johnston is not a physically imposing defenceman by any means. Standing at 5’10 and weighing in at 181 pounds, his relatively slight frame more or less fits the general archetype preferred by Kyle Dubas and, by extension, the Marlies when going about filling the fringes of their lineup. Johnston’s role will not be to bash in an opponent’s head on a nightly basis. That’s now how this team operates. Rather, Johnston’s puck-moving prowess and transitional game read as his most coveted traits, and both could very nicely aid the Marlies’ depth entering a season in which their roster will be the youngest its been in years.

The scarcest resource in hockey right now is right-shot defencemen. Johnston is one.

It’s as simple as that.

Michael Kapla

Kapla’s signing brings with for even more questions than Johnston’s.

With 24 points in 66 games split between the Binghamton Devils and Iowa Wild last season, Kapla is an offensively capable AHL defenceman – one who also fills a decidedly thin positional group for the Marlies, at least for the moment.

Where Kapla ultimately fits into the Marlies’ current construction, however, hinges entirely upon how Maple Leafs’ training camp plays out. He’s a left-shot defenceman. And whereas the Marlies’ right side continues to be flush with bodies, their left side remains entirely fluid, boasting a number of so-called “tweeners” – Andreas Borgman, Martin Marincin, Kevin Gravel, Ben Harpur, etc. – who could each equally begin the 2019-20 season either as Leafs or in the AHL.

Now, if the Maple Leafs opt for keeping those four up with the big club to serve as early-season injury reinforcements, Kapla immediately becomes the Marlies’ second-pairing LHD alongside one of Duszak, Hollowell, or Lindgren. However, that outcome is relatively unlikely. At least one of those aforementioned names will kick things off in AHL, which would then bump Kapla down to the third pairing or, if that number becomes two or three, out of the lineup entirely.

But let’s play pretend for a moment. Assuming that Gravel is the odd man out in this case – which isn’t exactly a far-fetched vision – the Marlies will ice a D corps on opening night that looks something like this:

Sandin – Liljegren

Gravel – Lindgren

Kapla – Hollowell/Duszak

Honestly, that’s not terrible, especially by AHL standards. Six of the seven names fall in the category of 24-or-under, with Johnston, 27, being the oldest by a wide margin.

And while neither Kapla or Johnston are marquee veteran additions in the vein of Mueller or LoVerde, their arrivals aid in building the depth of the Maple Leafs’ organization nonetheless.

Frankly, it’s hard to argue with that.