Toronto Maple Leafs: 6 Remaining Questions Entering 2023-24

It’s been a long time since we saw the Toronto Maple Leafs play hockey.

After a whirlwind offseason that saw many faces come and go for the Toronto Maple Leafs, many of the team’s faithful are highly anticipating the opening of training camp later this month.

It was a long and eventful summer that saw the Leafs change GMs unexpectedly. Kyle Dubas was replaced by Brad Treliving, but the Leafs did retain their coach, recently signing Sheldon Keefe to a contract extension.

The Leafs spent wildly in Free Agency, having had ten + expiring contracts on their roster last year, and were thus able to hand out almost $20 million in contracts on or around July 1st.

Notable additions include Max Domi, John Klingberg, Ryan Reaves and Martin Jones.

Additionally, the Leafs took Ilya Samsonov to arbitration, assigned Matt Murray to the LTIR and signed their franchise player to a contract making him the NHL’s highest paid player.

William Nylander still needs a deal, and the blue-line is a work in progress, but camp is set to open up shortly.

With the evaluation process set to begin, there are still some questions left to be answered that pertain to the team’s potential success for the upcoming season.

Here are six questions that need answering as the Toronto Maple Leafs head into the 2023-24 NHL season.

Toronto Maple Leafs 6 Remaining Questions:

1. With the departures of many key forwards during the offseason, will any of the Leafs’ internal options step up to fill the void?

This past offseason, we saw the likes of Alexander Kerfoot, Michael Bunting, Ryan O’Reilly, Zach Aston-Reese and Noel Acciari all leave the Leafs via free agency, which is equivalent to almost two lines worth of players.

As a result, the Toronto Maple Leafs needed to fill those positions for the upcoming season, and they did so with the additions of Max Domi, Tyler Bertuzzi, and Ryan Reaves. However, the numbers coming in still doesn’t match the numbers going out, which means the Leafs will need some of their internal options to help fill the void.

Among the internal options, Pontus Holmberg got a good taste of NHL life last year, as he tallied five goals and eight assists in 37 games played before he was sent back down to the minors in favour of the trade deadline acquisitions.

So perhaps he will get a chance to regain his spot on the roster this coming season. Also, Nick Robertson has always been knocking on the door the past couple of seasons, but his unfortunate luck running into injuries had set him back each time. Finally back to full health, could this be his breakout season that everyone has been waiting for?

Or perhaps the running favourite among them all is playoff sensation Matthew Knies. After all, he had one goal and three assists in seven playoff games, including setting up the OT winner to help the Leafs finally make it past the first round in almost two decades.

In addition, he plays a power game that complements well with either of the Leafs top two lines, and remains just as effective in a third line checking role as well.

Nevertheless, at least one of them will need to step it up for the team to help make up for some of the lost offensive firepower from the departed players. Otherwise, the Leafs could be in for a long season with regards to providing adequate secondary scoring.

2. Will the failure to re-sign hard-hitting players like Luke Schenn, Justin Holl, Aston-Reese and Acciari hurt the Leafs in the long run?

When the Leafs added both Luke Schenn and Noel Acciari for the playoff run last season, it helped transform the team into one that was finally hard to play against, as both Schenn and Acciari were known to be monster human-hitting machines.

Also, Justin Holl could take all the criticism he wants from the Leafs’ faithful and it sure might not have felt like it, but he was actually among the Leafs leaders in hits last season with 151.

In addition, with Aston-Reese averaging over two hits a game and over 160 per season, the overall newly formed composition of the team enabled them to wear down their opponents with their hard-hitting style of play and forecheck.

However, all four hard-nosed players are now gone from the Leafs roster and have been intricately replaced with Domi, Bertuzzi and Reaves.

Among the three, only Reaves averages over 100 hits a season, but at the same time, averages below 10 minutes of ice time per game. For both Domi and Bertuzzi, they aren’t really pure “hitters”, but rather bring a style of play that adds some bite to their game when the grind gets tough.

So all of a sudden, the hard-hitting, wear down game that seemed to help the Leafs finally win their first playoff round in decades is now gone, and replaced with a more grinding, bullying style of play with the new additions.

Will this style be enough to give the Leafs star players the freedom to do what they want, or will they be hard-pressed to counter any aggressive style of play by their opponents due to their lack of hitting and forecheck?

How they ultimately adjust to this new style of play will determine whether the drastic offseason changes end up paying dividends for the team.

3. Is the trade-off of the defensively-minded Schenn and Holl for the offensively-minded John Klingberg going to pay off for the Leafs?

One of the other key free agent signings in the past offseason for the Toronto Maple Leafs was the addition of former offensive stalwart John Klingberg to their defence corps.

He was definitely a star defenceman back in his time with the Dallas Stars from 2014-22, but both of his offensive and defensive stats have started to decline somewhat in the past couple of years.

For those who could recall, it also hasn’t been that long ago when the Toronto Maple Leafs added an offensively-minded defenceman in Tyson Barrie to their lineup and we all know how that turned out.

Klingberg doesn’t lay out his opponents with big hits as much as both Schenn and Holl do. In addition, he averages just under 80 blocks per season, compared to both Schenn and Holl who each averages over 100 blocks per season.

Despite his brief time with the Leafs, Schenn actually fared well in a top-pairing role with Morgan Rielly during the playoffs. He complemented Rielly’s style of play very well, making them a strong offensive/defensive pairing.

In addition, even though some may not agree, Holl had actually been quite solid defensively for the Leafs during his time with the team, and played a key role in their penalty-killing over the years.

It will be hard to see Klingberg being able to reproduce the same results if given either of those roles on the team, so he will need to figure out his appropriate niche eventually to stick with the team and not become another failed experiment down the road.

4. Is Ryan Reaves the right “bodyguard” for the Leafs?

For the past few seasons, the Toronto Maple Leafs have used the likes of Matt Martin, Kyle Clifford and Wayne Simmonds as potential “bodyguards” for their superstars on their team.

That way, it helped prevent anything from getting out of hand, as they would respond quickly if anything were to arise.

However, all of them ended up getting less and less playing time as the season wore on, as the Leafs generally ended up deploying a more offensive or defensive style lineup down the stretch.

After all, the league has certainly moved away from the years where having an enforcer on the team made a huge difference, so their effectiveness has definitely waned in the past few years.

So with the surprise free agent signing of Reaves, many had wondered if it was the right move to make by Leafs GM Brad Treliving.

Not only was he signed to a longer than expected three-year deal, he is also on the wrong side of 30 at the twilight age of 36. Don’t forget, Simmonds was only 34 years old last year and as a former offensive threat that once scored over 30 goals per season, he was already on a rapid decline due to his style of play.

For Reaves, not only has he been known to be a non-offensive threat over the years, but as an enforcer, the amount of fights and PIMs he has accumulated the past few years has also been trending downwards.

Which makes one really wonder, what exactly will be his role with the Leafs?

Perhaps he may be there to provide veteran leadership for the team, as he has been known to be a strong voice in the locker room.

Otherwise, with the enforcer role being greatly reduced over the years, he may find himself in a similar situation as his predecessors, losing valuable playing time down the road as the year progresses.

5. Will head coach Sheldon Keefe be able to finally take the team to another level?

For Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Sheldon Keefe, he had been leading the team behind the bench since November of 2019 when he replaced the legend Mike Babcock.

Since then, the Leafs have had great success during the regular season, usually finishing among the top ten in the league each year.

However, he has been unable to take the Leafs to the next level, having only one playoff round win to show for in the past five years.

Many were expecting when former Leafs GM Kyle Dubas wasn’t returning to the team for the 2023-24 season, Keefe’s days as the team’s head coach were numbered.

However, even with a new GM at the helm, Keefe has now been signed to a two-year extension, give him two extra lives to lead the Leafs to the Holy Grail.

Will proceeding with the same coaching style actually help the team in the long run, or could it perhaps backfire as his repeated style could become stale and potentially losing the locker room in the process?

The first couple of months of the season should provide a good sample size of whether or not the move was the right thing to do, as he will have the opportunity to incorporate the newly signed players into his system to see how things go.

But if things were to fail, he should be careful as he may see himself in the hot seat once again with the stakes running high.