The Toronto Maple Leafs are 20 games into their 2023-24 regular season. This time of year is known as the quarter mark of the NHL season and is a perfect time to evaluate how the players on a team are doing.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are 11-6-3 after 20 games and are sitting fourth in the Atlantic Division. It’s not the start they were hoping for, so we’ll see what changes general manager Brad Treliving makes to try and right the ship.
Those on the outside will often hear NHL general managers, scouts, and others within an NHL organization use the phrase “Wait until American Thanksgiving.”
The reason is that by the time Americans celebrate their Thanksgiving in November, most teams have played between 20-22 games. Most teams try not to overreact too soon into a season, so most will wait until the quarter mark of the season to decide what changes need to be made.
For Leafs GM Treliving, he needs to fix a few off-season mistakes.
The main one is John Klingberg. Due to an ongoing injury, Klingberg could be spending the rest of the 2023-24 season on LTIR.
Although Conor Timmins has returned to the Leafs defense, more needs to be done to improve the Leafs blue line.
More needs to be done throughout the lineup, but here is a look at the grades of each Leafs player at the quarter mark of the season. All stats are from hockey-reference.com)