For whatever reason, the 2026-27 Toronto Maple Leafs season has very little hype around it and that's okay.
It may just be because it's the middle of summer and the Leafs are coming off a missed playoff apperance, but the little hype is weird. For the first time in the Auston Matthews era, the entire team got a full offseason to rest and recover, which is huge for a veteran group.
Although they may have only made it past the First Round twice, that extra few weeks of hockey and stress that it puts on your body is a lot for any professional athlete. It's not the same feeling as how the Vegas Golden Knights and Carolina Hurricanes are feeling, but those extra games make the recovery much harder.
With the full five months of recovery, Auston Matthews, Matthew Knies and Chris Tanev (maybe not as much) should all be healthy for opening night and those players at their peak will make this team a hard team to play against every night. We already know that John Tavares and William Nylander are going to score between 25-40 goals and play every night so the second line is set, but the rest of the team should be getting way more hype than it seems.
Leafs should be getting more hype than they have been
Not only are they adding Gavin McKenna, who will be the favourite to win Rookie of the Year, but the entire bottom-six is revamped, led by Nick Paul. Other vertans such as Colton Sissons, Jack Roslovic and Brandon Duhaime will make this team look much different too, and we haven't even got to the back-end.
The Leafs added a top-pairing defenseman in Darren Raddysh and that isn't even the biggest move. For the first time since Ed Belfour, Toronto has a Vezina Trophy winning goalie who they can rely on night-after-night. He may be 37 years old now, but Sergie Bobrovsky is a goaltender you want to go to battle with and the fact that the Leafs secured the two-time Stanley Cup winner should have led to parades in the streets.
Maybe it's because they still have Matthews, Tavares and Nylander, so the old-guard still looks the same, but the rest of this team is completely different and we should all be jacked for hockey to start. This may be a bold statement but the playoffs should be a lock for this team next year and if they play their cards right at the NHL Trade Deadline, we could be looking at one of the most fun runs in a while.
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