Dealing with pressure comes with the territory for players of the Toronto Maple Leafs. With another high-stakes season ahead, the Leafs face growing expectations from fans, media, and management alike.
While the team as a whole shoulders the weight of playoff hopes, a handful of players are feeling the heat more than others. How they perform will be a critical factor in the team's success this season.
Whether it's proving they belong, bouncing back from a down year, living up to a hefty contract, or playing for a future deal, these five Maple Leafs enter the 2025-2026 season with something to prove.
Which Toronto Maple Leafs must deliver this season?
Nick Robertson
The Leafs' former second-round draft pick, Nick Robertson is running out of chances to entrench himself within the lineup. Injury setbacks hindered his development early in his career, and for the past two seasons, he has been miscast as a third or fourth-line player due to the team's depth at forward and his defensive and physical deficiencies.
The restricted free agent reupped with the Maple Leafs on a very reasonable one-year deal for $1.825 million. He has scored twenty-nine goals over the past two years, twenty-six at even-strenghth.
That production came without reaching the seventy-game played mark in either season. With Mitch Marner leaving the Leafs, a top-six replacement is one of the team's glaring needs. The 2025-26 season is Robertson's best opportunity to establish himself as a mainstay in the lineup who can score twenty-plus goals. If he doesn't, this is likely his last year in Toronto.
Morgan Rielly
Morgan Rielly, the longest-tenured Maple Leaf, has come under scrutiny as a potential trade candidate despite a no-movement clause within his contract. He was inconsistent during the 2024-25 season, especially struggling during the first half of the year as he adjusted to new coach Craig Berube's system.
Rielly has been an extraordinary representative of the Leafs' organization from the moment he was drafted fifth overall in 2012. Since then, he has accumulated forty-plus points in half of his twelve NHL seasons.
Perhaps his eight-year extension with the Maple Leafs, which has five years remaining with a $7.5 million AAV, has heightened expectations from the team's fans and media. The positive news? Rielly's play improved over the second half of the 2024-25 season, especially after the arrival of his new defensive partner, Brandon Carlo. He is one of the few Leafs who usually improve their play during the playoffs.
Rielly's performance will be closely monitored during the coming season. He brings an offensive presence to the team's blue line that others on the roster can't, but if his play regresses, the critics will be ready to pounce.
Auston Matthews
Having Auston Matthews, the Maple Leafs' best player with a mantel full of NHL hardware, under the microscope to produce may be a tad rash, but the league's best sniper since he entered the NHL needs to deliver in 2025-26.
Coming off an injury-plagued season and a career-low thirty-three goals in 2024-25, the Leafs' first-line center needs to rebound for the team to be successful. A return to his sixty-goal form is a must to help replace the loss of Marner.
Matthews' determination to succeed without his long-time right winger and a return to health should be driving factors for a bounce-back season with his usual elite-level production. His second full season as captain, and the first significant change to the team's core of forwards, should provide further motivation for Matthews' return to being one of the league's top-five players.
Matthew Knies
Matthew Knies enters the 2025-26 season expected to produce. Two increasingly productive seasons into his NHL career, Knies is no longer a young prospect with hope of big things to come. His time is now.
The Maple Leafs' first-line left winger blossomed during his second full NHL season. He scored twenty-nine goals in 2024-25 and registered a hundred and eighty-two hits, stats that ranked him among the league's best power forwards.
He signed a six-year, $46.5 million extension with the Maple Leafs during the offseason. His $7.75 million AAV ranks third-highest on the team behind Matthews and William Nylander, a sure sign that Leafs management believes he is an integral piece to the team's success. Now, it's up to Knies to reward their faith in him.
Anthony Stolarz
Anthony Stolarz had a remarkable first season with the Leafs. He led the NHL in save percentage and set career-highs in games played (34) and wins (21). He established himself as the team's starting goaltender heading into the playoffs and was stellar during a first-round series win versus the Ottawa Senators.
He suffered a concussion from a controversial hit from the Florida Panthers' Sam Bennett during Game 1 of the Leafs' second-round series and didn't return until backing up Joseph Woll for Game 7. That, plus a mid-season lower-body injury, were the only blemishes on his sensational debut season in Toronto.
The 2025-26 season is the final year of Stolarz's two-year deal with the Leafs. The thirty-one-year-old needs to build on last year's numbers and prove his durability to be a number-one starting NHL goaltender, with one last chance for a big payday as he nears free agency in the summer of 2026.
Whether it's veterans looking for redemption or young talent stepping into the spotlight, these five players will shape the narrative of the Toronto Maple Leafs' 2025-26 season. They must deliver for the team to achieve its ever-elusive success.