The Toronto Maple Leafs top line is whatever line that Auston Matthews plays on.
Auston Matthews is the second best player alive, and the best player in the history of the Toronto Maple Leafs franchise.
This season, he will almost certainly enter the top five on the Leafs all-time scoring list.
The only question is, who will be his linemates when he does it?
The Toronto Maple Leafs Top Line in 2024-25 Should Look Like This
For the longest time, Auston Matthews was paired with Mitch Marner to form one of the best duos in hockey.
However, there is some question about the law of diminishing returns when you pair two elite players together.
Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner are both elite players who have the abilities to evelate other non-elite players to elite status. When you pair them together, they are great, but they can only turn one other player into a star when you do that.
If you, however, put them on seperate lines, and you can have four players improve drastically.
This happened when Marner was injured and Sheldon Keefe tried Max Domi on the Matthews' wing. Domi responded by scoring nearly 4 points per 60 minutes of 5v5 ice-time with the Big Dawg.
Domi, when paired with Matthews, scored at a higher rate than Connor McDavid has ever finished a season at.
Pairing them together again is a no-brainer, and I doubt very much Domi would have been re-signed if he this wasn't the plan. Domi's defense is terrible and he therefore must be extremely sheltered in order to win his minutes as a centre.
Domi at third-line centre creates a plethora of issues because you still need a shut-down line, so this ends up making the fourth line play more, and it restricts the team's best players from getting some of the easier minutes, which is something a coach needs to do to get an advantage (take a look at how the Rangers deploy Panarin for more on this topic).
So we pretty much have a top line combo of Matthews and Domi, but who should their winger be?
I vote William Nylander.
Nylander doesn't drive a line the same way that Marner and Matthews do. He is a great player, but he is also, like Domi, a defensive liability. Matthews is a stong defensive player, but the Leafs would do well to try to find him some easy matchups, and this line really works for that purpose.
Matthews presense means you can use Nylander and Domi against harder competition than you normally would, and it frees up the other lines significantly especially because the two players the coach would normally look to shelter don't need to be sheltered.
Another factor here is that with Auston Matthews taking all the attention, William Nylander will get open looks that are not normally so easy to get for a 40 goal scorer.
With Knies, Robertson, McMann, Tavares, Marner and potentially Easton Cowan the Leafs would have a ton of depth scoring, while Matthews could potentially elevate both Domi and Nylander into producing like franchise players.