The Toronto Maple Leafs are going to run the NHL this year.
The Toronto Maple Leafs finished 4th overall last year and every team ahead of them got significantly worse.
Colorado lost Nazem Kadri, and Darcy Kuemper. Tampa had to get rid of several players, including Ryan McDonagh and Ondrej Palat, while Florida lost about half their team.
The Leafs might not have done much, but unlike the teams who are their peers, they didn’t get any worse. The Leafs signed some depth players, but for improvement, they will be looking internally.
Timothy Liljegren and Rasmus Sandin were excellent last season, and both should be no-doubt top-four players by the end of this upcoming season. Those two will significantly make the Leafs better, but the wild card is Nick Robertson.
Liljegren and Sandin are almost locks to become integral players. Robertson has to overcome an injury history that has been most unfortunate. If he does, I expect him to win a top-six left wing job and make Alex Kerfoot expendable.
Toronto Maple Leafs and Nick Robertson
Robertson was the youngest player in his draft, and if he was born just a week later, he’d have been drafted an entire year later, and in the first, not second round.
Players since 1990 who have scored as much as Robertson did at his age in the OHL all have 40 goal NHL seasons to their name.
Robertson has the second-best shot on the Leafs after Matthews and one of the best releases in the NHL. He will score 40 goals eventually too, if he stays healthy.
His tenacity and hard-working game will make him a fan-favorite, but his shot is going to make him a millionaire and a star.
Robertson likely makes the Leafs out of camp if for no other reason that that his shot is an absolute weapon that can be used on the power-play. Last year he played ten games and had an on-ice shooting percentage (meaning himself and everyone he was ever on the ice with) of under 2%. Even the worst shooter in NHL history will shoot roughly 7% over any real sample size, so the fact that Robertson didn’t score more than a single goal in his ten games last year shouldn’t concern anyone – his stats were actually good.
Wherever he starts out, he’ll eventually make his way to the left side John Tavares and (one assumes) William Nylander, where he will take advantage of open ice in much the same way Michael Bunting does while playing with two players the other team is forced to key on.
Because he played six games in 20-21 and ten games last year, Robertson does not technically qualify as a rookie, even though he’s only played in 16 career NHL games.
It doesn’t matter. 20 year olds who score 16 goals in 28 AHL games belong in the NHL. If he played a full AHL season, he would have challenged for the league-lead in goals. Expect Robertson in the NHL this season.