The Toronto Maple Leafs were the busiest team in the NHL on the first day of free agency. A trade and a slew of signings to fill out their roster was all done in mere hours.
But there was a theme to all of these deals and it became so obvious when the full picture was pieced together. The Maple Leafs want to make Auston Matthews be able to be Auston Matthews.
Throughout the last two seasons while playing under Craig Berube, Matthews had to do the heavy lifting on both ends of the ice. He got deployed like he has never been deployed before. Small things like instead of starting around 70% of his shifts in the offensive zone, it was down to 55% -- as the captain needed to take more defensive responsibility. But in turn, was not able to take advantage of his offensive opportunities as well.
For some reason, Berube decided one of the NHL's best goalscorers should have to start as far away as the other team's net as possible, as often as possible.
John Chayka is helping out Auston Matthews with these signings
While new head coach Jim Hiller could just simply give the advantageous deployment to Matthews, the Leafs have those defensive responsibilities go to players who can't perform well on that side of the puck.
So, in come the free agent class for Toronto.
Between Nick Paul, Colton Sissons and Teddy Bleuger, John Chayka is making sure that Auston Matthews starts none of his shifts in the DZ.
— Rachel Kryshak (@RachelKryshak) July 1, 2026
By trading for Nick Paul from the Tampa Bay Lightning, and signing both Colton Sissons and Teddy Bleuger, Matthews should not worry about being in his own zone even close to as often as he did under Berube. These guys are more than capable of taking care of all that.
Whether this works or not is still to be seen, since Matthews could very well still be the best defensive player of that group, but in theory it certainly works. Berube wasn't going to put Max Domi out there in this role, or have anyone else but Scott Laughton making these important draws. But now the Leafs look a whole lot more solid in the bottom six and they can take care of all of that.
Maybe Matthews doesn't even bother with his own team's half of the ice. Just pull an Alex Ovechkin and get as easy a deployment ever and score 80 or so goals. There we go.
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