The Toronto Maple Leafs are going to be in tough to repeat the success of the last four years.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are not the team they were entering the playoffs, which is to be expected since they had 10 expiring contracts and lost a lot of talent.
The problem is that the Leafs aren’t as good as they were a year ago.
The goalies could go either way, but the defense is brutal and the forwards are much worse than they were last as well (since replacing the insane value that Bunting brought for $900K is going to be nearly impossible, let alone the fact that they are now missing the magical ability of the Engvall/Kampf combo to shut down star players).
While they are likely still going to be a top team, they will have to do three things if they want to compete.
3 Things the Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Compete
The first thing is goaltending. Last year, three of the four goalies the Leafs used posted star-level numbers at 5v5. Kalgren, Woll and Samsonov were excellent when called upon, and Matt Murray was decent.
The Toronto Maple Leafs ended up 8th overall in save-percentage (5v5) (all stats naturalstattrick.com). In order to be a top team again, they are going to have to get excellent goaltending. This is a total wildcard as there really isn’t anything you can do, short of trading for Ilya Sorokin, to make sure this happens.
The second thing they need is for a player who doesn’t make very much money to put in a star-level season. Tyler Bertuzzi is nice, but he’s never had a season as good as the last two from Bunting, and he makes 5 x the money.
A smarter team might have just put Robertson and Knies in the top-six and then used the $5 million on a defenseman, but Bertuzzi is still a nice piece to have. The Leafs aren’t depending on Bertuzzi, however. What they need to compete is for Knies or Robertson to come close to what Bunting was bringing to the table for the same salary.
The final thing the Toronto Maple Leafs need to compete is a trade for a defenseman or two. Ideally they’d bring in a physical defensive presence like Chris Tanev and a young potential star like Bowen Byram or Tomas Chabot.
Either way, the are unlikely to compete – short of an insane season by Woll or Samsonov – unless they improve their blue-line.