Max Domi wants entire NHL to fear Maple Leafs

The Toronto Maple Leafs want to be different. Heading into the season, general manager Brad Treliving called for a change in their DNA and one forward seems to be leading the charge to sustain that messaging through the preseason.

Max Domi wants to see this Leafs team go from a group of players that can win a game through some skill and being generally better than their opponents most nights, to a team that strikes fear into all 31 other teams and fanbases. A team that people really don't want to see on the calendar.

"We're going to be hard to play against and I think that's the key," Domi said. "Teams are going to know, when they see our team on the schedule, that's gonna be a tough night. You gotta back it up, and it starts with the habits at practice, competing against your buddies, and that's hard to do. But, if you do it every single day for the course of the whole season, you're setting yourself up for success."

The Leafs should be a different team based purely on the changes they made to their roster. We can talk about it endlessly but they removed one of the best two-way wingers in the NHL in Mitch Marner, and replaced his smaller frame with a two slabs of beef in Dakota Joshua and Nicolas Roy to solidify any depth concerns. And then, Toronto bought extremely low on playmaking winger Matias Maccelli to round out some of the skill that they ended up losing in other moves.

Based purely on not having to roll out players who don't engage physically in the bottom half of the Leafs lineup, this DNA change has been made. A full year of Scott Laughton, Steven Lorentz continuing to do what he does, and then throwing Joshua and Roy in the mix, and that's a tidy crew. Bobby McMann, Max Domi, Nick Robertson -- whoever else would then be added to the bottom six for some scoring help and that's a group that can work tirelessly in all aspects of the game.

That is something that is going to annoy rival fans so much and create a sense of exhaustion for the other teams before they even step onto the ice. Domi (and all of us) wants opposing teams to look down the Leafs roster and just grow more and more tired thinking about how hard they're going to have to skate and how many hits they're going to need to take each night.

All of that together forms some kind of very good hockey team playing in a winning way.