Toronto Maple Leafs: Nick Robertson Gets Dream Start on Saturday Night

Toronto Maple Leafs youngster Nick Robertson will get an opportunity of a lifetime in the team’s top-six.

For the past few weeks, trade rumors have been popping up daily surrounding the Toronto Maple Leafs; especially their left-wing position.

Heading into the season, the Leafs left-wing position was always their biggest question mark. The team had Ilya Mikheyev, Nick Ritchie, Michael Bunting and Alex Kerfoot as potential top-six options, but none were locks to keep the job.

The Ritchie experiment was a disaster, but they fortunately hit the jack-pot with Bunting. The 26-year-old rookie is on-pace for 30 goals this season and has been a great complement to Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner.

Alex Kerfoot has worked out fine on the second-line, similarly to Ilya Mikheyev, but we all know both players are better suited in the bottom-six. They’re legit NHLers, who can play depth positions, but you’d prefer them playing 12 minutes per night, instead of 20 minutes.

Throughout this entire process, and for the past two years, many Leafs fans have hoped that Nick Robertson could be the next legitimate top-six left-winger for this team.

However, because of the pandemic, injuries and development issues, Robertson wasn’t ready.

Until, now.

Nick Robertson Could Be a Game-Changer

The Toronto Maple Leafs have $5.65M in cap-space available after Jake Muzzin went on long-term injured reserve.

With that cap-space, many people have looked at J.T. Miller as the ideal person to trade for, now that the team can afford him. However, instead of looking for a forward, that money could be better used to help bolster the blue-line, while Robertson plays in Toronto’s top-six.

You never want to rush a player to the NHL and hurt his development, but Robertson’s skillset could be used perfectly beside John Tavares and William Nylander.

After a hot-start, both players have cooled down, so they could use a youngster like Robertson to give them the spark they desperately need. At 5-foot-9, 165 pounds, Robertson isn’t a bottom-six player, so if he’s going to be up with the Leafs right now, he might as well be playing with highly-skilled players, instead of playing five minutes per night on the fourth line.

In 30 games with the Toronto Marlies, Robertson has 24 points. That’s pretty impressive for a rookie, no matter how high you were drafted in the NHL.

His offensive skills and wrist shot are NHL ready, but is he physically ready? That’s the biggest question and the only way you’re going to find that out is by playing him a lot of minutes with some of your best players.

With a few weeks left before the NHL Trade Deadline, this is a huge audition for Nick Robertson to show general manager Kyle Dubas that the team doesn’t need to trade for a top-six left-winger.

If Robertson can be a legit second-line winger, it’ll free up a ton of cap-space to upgrade the blue-line and will make this team a legitimate contender.