Battle of Ontario Preview 2024-25

Defencemen

The Toronto Maple Leafs made upgrades to their blueline this offseason while the Senators did the opposite.

Toronto brought in Chris Tanev and Oliver Ekman Larson to replace Ilya Lybushkin and Joel Edmunsson.

While Ottawa made one of the most head scratching trades in recent NHL history and moved Jakob Chychrun to the Washington Capitals for Nick Jensen and a draft pick.

On top of that, they decided not to qualify Erik Brannstrom who, back in 2019, was a big piece in the return for Mark Stone.

Brannstrom has a lot of offensive upside but was unable to gain trust defensively from the coaching staff in Ottawa, which led to his departure.

Despite those two loses on the back end for Ottawa, they still have Thomas Chabot, Jake Sanderson and Artem Zub who were all standout pieces of that blue line last season.

Thomas Chabot is their number one defenceman when healthy and is the best defenceman out of both team's d-cores.

When fully healthy he is able to play 26 minutes a night and is resonsible with the puck on his stick, something that is uncommon for a defenceman that brings a lot of offence. In 51 games he had 30 points and an on ice expected goals percentage of 58.2%.

Jake Sanderson had a good sophmore campaign, picking up Chabot's minutes when he was injured and proved he could matchup against the top lines in the league, while still providing offence.

Sanderson taking that next step is part of the reason Ottawa felt they could move Chychrun due to Chabot and Sanderson playing in front of him.

As for the right side of Ottawa's D-core Artem Zub, Nick Jensen, and Jakob Bernard Docker are not the flashiest players, but all play great defensively and complement, those on the left side of the blue line.

The Maple Leafs right side is much stronger going into the 2024-25 season. Tanev, Liljegren and McCabe alongside Rielly, Ekman Larson and Benoit are more balanced than we've seen in the past.

Rielly is not a number one defenceman like Chabot but he has been a great 1B or 2A for Toronto for many years.

Adding Chris Tanev to play alongside of him, will hopefully allow Rielly to get back to his 2021-22 self where he scored 68 points. Tanev is a warrior and will block, hit and move anything that stands in between the player with the puck and his own goalie. However, with this style of play comes a lot of injury concern.

Tanev has only played one full 82 game season in his career and it was in 2021-22. Hopefully with the help of the Maple Leafs training staff they can keep Tanev healthy for the majority of the season.

The second pairing of Benoit and McCabe is great and has the potential to be better with it being Benoit's second full season with the Maple Leafs. A pairing that can match up against other teams' top lines and could even be changed situationally to have McCabe play with Tanev, to make an all defensive line late in the game while defending a lead.

The third pairing of Oliver Ekman Larsson and Liljegren will be interesting as Liljegren has yet to become the defenceman the Maple Leafs hoped he would be.

He was one of two solid puck movers on the blue line last year but has been unable to elevate his game to earn a top 4 role. Maybe Berube will be able to deploy him appropriately as him and Keefe didn't seem to ever mesh.

Oliver Ekman Larsson just won the Stanley Cup with the Florida Panthers a few weeks ago and played a third pairing role there.

He is not the defenceman that he once was in Arizona but he is certainly an upgrade from Edmundson and Lyubushkin. If given the opportunity, he can run the 2nd powerplay over Liljegren.

The Maple Leafs blueline is deeper than the Senators, but the Senators have arguebly two better defencemen than Morgan Rielly, in Thomas Chabot and Jake Sanderson.

Still, I feel that with the additions of Tanev and Ekman Larsson for Toronto and the subtraction of Chychrun for Ottawa, the Maple Leafs have the more well rounded blue line.