10 Best Remaining NHL UFAs for the Toronto Maple Leafs

The Toronto Maple Leafs and General Manager Brad Treliving have been busy trying to build a roster better than the one that took them to the second round in 2022-23. So far, the vision has been clear.

The team is going to be physically bigger and tougher. Treliving made sure of that beginning with his first acquisition, tough guy Ryan Reaves. Now, what the Toronto Maple Leafs could use is more fundamental talent. Ideally, players who can defend and score.

There is still a deep pool of unrestricted free agents (UFA) from which Treliving can go shopping. After giving $5.5M to Tyler Bertuzzi, $4.15M to John Klingberg, $3M to Max Domi, and $1.35M to Reaves, the difficulty of course is the limited cap space the Leafs have.

A trade could open up more room for Treliving, which does appear to be a viable option for the franchise prior to puck drop in October. With more salary cap space, the Leafs would absolutely dip into the UFA market.

These are the 10 best unsigned UFAs still available. (stats from NHL.com, cap info from capfriendly.com).

Honourable Mention – Caleb Jones

He may not be a household name like his older brother Seth, but Caleb Jones is a five-year NHL veteran.

Jones patrolled the blue line in Chicago for the last couple of seasons, where, according to Hockey Reference, he logged an average of 19:13 minutes per night. It’s a lot of time for a player with his penchant for error. While Jones is an above average skater, he is someone prone to mistakes on the ice.

Jones with the Toronto Maple Leafs would likely spell disaster. While he may be a fine fit and his metrics may even be okay (this year he had Corsi rating of 47.5 at even strength, which was 4.8 better than his team), Leafs fans are not very forgiving with on-ice blunders. Look no further to Justin Holl as an example.