The Toronto Maple Leafs have announced their roster for training camp ahead of the 2021 NHL season.
The Toronto Maple Leafs will begin camp today with off-ice things such as medicals, then begin actual on-ice training camp tomorrow. The season will start on January 13th.
The Leafs enter the season among a small group of teams who are favored to win, but a disappointing series of results last year has people a little softer on them than they deserve to be.
The offseason saw the Leafs tinker mostly around the margins. Other than signing UFA defenseman T.J Brodie, they added only depth players, veterans and KHL wildcards.
Toronto Maple Leafs Training Camp
The Leafs announced their training camp roster:
https://twitter.com/MapleLeafs/status/1345784553101811714
The only surprise I see when looking at this list is that Denis Malgin is not on it. I assume he will stay in Europe for whatever reason, and that’s fine because it’s not like the Leafs lack depth (they could reasonably play 20 of the 23 forwards on this list on their fourth line without any noticeable problems).
Justin Brazeau is a fun project, but he isn’t NHL ready, Scott Sabourin is 28 and has only 35 NHL games under his belt (all with Ottawa) and I have honestly never even heard or Rourke Chartier. Other than that, I think even a Brooks-Petan-Agostino fourth line would be way above the NHL average.
In other words, they’re an EXTREMELY DEEP TEAM.
For confirmation, check out the fact that they have four NHL goalies in training camp, and of their 13 training camp defensemen, at least 11 of them are perfectly adequate bottom-of-the-lineup NHL defenseman.
As for the two who aren’t – Mac Hollowell and Teemu Kivihalme – they could probably do OK in an emergency, which once again displays the insane amount of depth on this roster. Because of the shortened season, I am guessing the Leafs aren’t bothering to waste time with players who have no chance of making the lineup. In a normal year, I think we’d see players like Rodion Amirov, the previously mentioned Malgin, Filip Halander, Simeon Der-Arguchintsev, and a few more guys.
No matter, the dawn of the new season is finally upon us, and this is probably the best roster I’ve ever seen the Leafs ice in all my years as a hockey fan. I continue to believe they wasted their best shots (when Matthews and Marner were on entry-level deals) but just the fact that I won’t see Ron Hainsey or Codi Ceci on a top pairing this year gives me tons of hope.
A full season with Sheldon Keefe might just be the biggest factor.