Toronto Maple Leafs: Time to Replace John Tavares As Captain?

Brendan Shanahan shifted the direction of the Toronto Maple Leafs when he elected to fire Kyle Dubas and bring in Brad Treliving.

One question now, should the Toronto Maple Leafs make one additional organizational shift before the start of the season and switch the captaincy?

John Tavares has served as the Captain for the last four seasons after being named prior to the 2019-20 season, one-year after joining the franchise and serving as an alternate captain in that first year.  He was named the leader when both Mike Babcock and Dubas were the head of the team, now both those men are gone.

During his time as the leader of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the club has made the playoffs each season and won one playoff round thanks to an overtime goal scored by him this past post season against Tampa Bay Lightning.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Time to Replace John Tavares As Captain?

In the span of those four seasons, Tavares has averaged 32-goals and 78-points over an 82-game season.  In the five-playoff series he has played he has collected nine goals and 17-points in just 24 games, while scoring just the one game winning goal.

Prior to joining the Maple Leafs, Tavares played nine seasons with the New York Islanders and served as captain for five seasons from 2013-14 until he left after the 2017-18 seasons.  In that time, the Islanders made the playoffs just twice and won one playoff round.

Tavares is known as a quiet leader and garners a ton of respect from his professional approach, but that might not be what is needed for this group of Toronto Maple Leafs.  The style of hockey that the franchise typically plays has their players skate away from any type of confrontation.  The motto appears to be that they will beat their opponents on the powerplay.

Unfortunately, during the playoffs the penalties get scarce and other teams build up momentum by continually bullying the Maple Leafs teams.  Toronto may need a leader that will bring them into the fight, too often it appears the team craters in tough situations.

You don’t need to have a player that drops the gloves and fights every night, but when things get tough, you sometimes need to defend yourself.  Hockey Fights has Tavares with two recorded fights over his career, with his last being almost 13 years ago.  While he doesn’t need to fight each night, he is rarely seen as someone that will engage in any type of rough stuff after the whistle where he or his teammates are getting taken advantage of.

If the team did decide to switch captains, they would have to do it in a way that is still respectful and would not disrupt the dressing room.  At times for other franchises the easiest way to make the switch is to trade the current captain, however that won’t happen with Tavares.  He has two years remaining on his contract on one of the most unmovable deals in the league.   The former Oshawa General serves an important role on the team and it is quite possible that he signs a much cheaper extension next season to finish his career as a Maple Leaf.

In hockey history, it is rare, but teams have been able to swap out captains without making a trade.  The San Jose Sharks swapped out captains twice in their history and retained the players both times, as both Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton once served that role with the team.

The Sharks had immediate success when Joe Pavelski was named the first captain after Thornton when he led the team to the Stanley Cup Finals.

It is not to say that Tavares should lose the captaincy as he has some quality attributes, but if they did decide to make a change here are some possibilities.

Auston Matthews

If Rielly is not the choice, the only other possibility would be that of Auston Matthews.  The Arizona native has already played in Toronto for seven seasons and has committed to play at least five more years in a Maple Leafs jersey.

The former first overall pick just signed a four-year extension that will now keep the two-time Rocket Richard Trophy victory in Toronto for at least the next five seasons.  In that time, he will become the Toronto Maple Leafs all-time leading goal scorer and likely become the first player in franchise history to score 500-goals in the uniform.

Matthews has been a top five player in the league for the last half decade and was acknowledged by his peers as the best player in 2021-22 when he won the Ted Lindsay Award (Most Outstanding Player chosen by the players around the league).  In that season he scored 60-goals in 73 games and has averaged 57-goals over an 82-game span through the last four seasons.

No player has scored more goals in the NHL than the 299 that Matthews has collected since he entered the league in 2016-17.

While the Maple Leafs have several highly skilled players, there is not a player on the roster that put his team on his back like Matthews and take over games.

There is the critics that will bring up that Matthews may have similar characteristics on the ice that Tavares has as he tends not to engage in the physicality of the game.  Many times over his career smaller teammates have had to come in and defend the Maple Leafs star.  There is the risk of losing Matthews to injury, but at times a star player can turn a game or season around by defending himself even if he doesn’t drop the gloves.

Tavares has been a great NHL player, but it may be time to move on from him as the captain of the team.  The Toronto Maple Leafs need to take the risk of handing the captaincy to either Morgan Rielly or Auston Matthews.