The Toronto Maple Leafs have an excellent team full of stars and high-end players.
One thing they don’t have, is a world class power-forward. The Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t had one of those for years, maybe decades.
That is because they are exceedingly rare.
Zach Hyman is a more of a grinder/puck retrieval type than a true power-forward. He plays a gritty game that I would call power-forward lite – the real thing scores more, takes more penalties, and is a way dirtier player.
Enter Matt Tkachuk, a player rumoured to want to leave the Calgary Flames this summer.
The Toronto Maple Leafs and Matt Tkachuk
Tkachuk just finished his fifth NHL season, and is 23 years old. In his best season, he scored 34 goals and was nearly a point per game, but he hasn’t equaled that since. This season, Tkachuk brought great 5v5 offense, but couldn’t finish. Despite leading all Flames forwards in 5v5 ice time per game, he was fourth in points and fifth in goals per minute.
He scored at just a second line rate. That, however, shouldn’t be too concerning. The last three years have seen Tkachuk put up numbers better than 87% of NHL forwards, if we are using Wins Above Replacement. For perspective, this would rank him behind Matthews, Marner and Tavares, but ahead of Nylander on the Leafs depth chart, though with the caveat that if we only look at the 2021 season, he was significantly worse this year than any of them. (WAR info from @Jfresh)
Obviously Tkachuk would provide a dynamic that the Leafs don’t have, but do they really want the Big Four to be the Big Five ? Would the Leafs really double down on their strategy of team building to being in another forward? I think they would, just not this one.
Adding another forward is a reasonable idea (any star, anywhere is a good idea) but because Tkachuk has one year left on a bridge deal that pays him $7 million and would cost a fortune in a trade, he isn’t likely to play for the Leafs. It is probably not worth the acquisition cost for one year of a player who, if he has any kind of success, is going to cost $10 million dollars to re-sign.
As awesome as adding Tkachuk would be, I don’t think he’s a realistic target for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Everyone wants to add a 30 goal 75+ PIM player who makes life hard for opponents, but since there are only a handful of these players available (with the decline of Corey Perry and Jamie Been, the Tkachuk Brothers along with Evander Kane and Brad Marchand are about the only examples in the NHL right now) you can probably live without one.
Matt Tkachuk is a nice dream, but he’s too expensive to acquire for a complimentary player and the fact is, if you want a power-forward the obvious one to go for is Evander Kane.