Toronto Maple Leafs Play It Safe, and That’s Fine

The Toronto Maple Leafs are taking a conservative approach to their opening night roster.

When the season opens tomorrow night against the Montreal Canadiens, the Toronto Maple Leafs will be deploying a roster that has seen all their high-end young talent relegated to the bench in favor of a trio of (mostly) washed up veterans.

While I normally wouldn’t agree that this is the approach to take, the 2021 situation presents some difficulties that makes it the sensible way to do things.

The season is short, so there is less room for error or experimentation. There is no training camp, so players who are coming from other leagues are at a huge disadvantage.  With Covid there are bound to be more players unavailable than usual throughout the season, and finally, the Leafs specifically are so close to the salary cap limits that they need players who do not need to clear waivers to be able to swap in and out of the lineup because they can only have 1 extra bench player most of the time.

Toronto Maple Leafs Play It Safe

Adding to this is the complications of Aaron Dell.  The Leafs obviously won’t want to carry three goalies on the NHL roster, but they might do so until other teams have their situations clear in order to lower the chances of losing him on waivers.

Cap space will accumulate throughout the season, and Dell will get placed on the Taxi Squad, so once that happens the Toronto Maple Leafs will be able to have two bench players and the waiver thing won’t matter so much.

Until then, it’s a conservative approach that sees Alex Barabanov starting low in the lineup, and Nick Robertson, Rasmus Sandin and Mikko Lehtonen on the bench.  Players like Jimmy Vesey, Wayne Simmonds, Zach Bogosian, Travis Dermott and Jason Spezza catch a break here and get a chance to permanently seal in jobs.

However, the Leafs are not a conservative team (they dressed a rookie a playoff game) and they are fully aware that for the risk of inexperience, the four aforementioned players (Robertson, Sandin, Lehtonen and Barabanov) represent a massive amount of high-ceiling potential over their veteran peers.

Not all of those guys are likely to break out this year, but one or two of them probably will.  The Leafs lineup is going to be in flux all year long, and there are going to be lots of differently looks and circumstances.   It therefore makes sense to play it safe for now, but there is just too much potential starting on the bench for my likings, and I can’t wait to see those guys play regularly.