Toronto Maple Leafs Regular Season+ Playoff Grades

Grading The Toronto Maple Leafs Regular Season

Before we get to the players, let's start with the team as a whole.

The Toronto Maple Leafs finished the regular season with a record of 46-26-10.

Before the first game of the season most oddsmakers had the Maple Leafs regular season point total set at 104.5. With the Leafs finishing the season with 102 points, it means they slightly underperformed as far as most models go.

Not only did the Maple Leafs underperform computer algorithm expectations, but they also underperformed in comparison to previous versions. They had their lowest point-per-game pace since the 2019-20 season, which was eventually cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following the offseason signings of Max Domi, Tyler Bertuzzi, Ryan Reaves and John Klingberg the buzz around this team was that the Maple Leafs new General Manager Brad Treliving put together a flawed roster that wasn't anywhere close to as good as the Leafs were in the previous season when they had Ryan O'Rielly.

While the Maple Leafs were one of the best offensive teams in hockey again this season, they left a lot to be desired on the defensive end, which is something Keefe and Dubas had mostly eliminated in previous years. This, combined with borderline awful goaltending for most of the season and the front office's failure to fill any of these holes at the trade deadline, is why I am giving the Maple Leafs the following grade:

Toronto Maple Leafs Regular Season Grade: C+

Look, the 2023-24 Maple Leafs are a tough team to grade, looking back on it expectations that were placed on this roster were probably too high to begin with, but outside of some shining stars, everything about this team felt very average.

I will continue to try and justify this grade as we get into each different player that wore the Blue and White this season...

Grading Brad Treliving's First Year As Toronto Maple Leafs General Manager

The only acceptable way to start this grading process is starting with the man responsible for building this roster, let's start with the first year Maple Leafs General Manager.

Brad Treliving Grade: F-

Treliving walked into any general manager's dream job with the Toronto Maple Leafs last summer. Mostly, the Leafs had a playoff-contending roster with an established group of superstars and tons of cap space to work with this past offseason.

There may have been somethings that were less than ideal, but overall few, if any, GMs have ever walked into a better situation.

To start with, Treliving made a couple of big signings in Tyler Bertuzzi and Max Domi; I will admit that Treliving did a good job not offering either of these two guys more than a one-year deal, which will give the Maple Leafs a lot of cap freedom heading into this upcoming season. Despite signing these guys to good deals, neither performed up to expectation, but we will get into that later.

Moving on to Treliving's subsequent offseason signing, John Klingberg, it may be unfair to judge this signing as Klingberg only played 14 games before landing on the long-term injured reserve for the rest of the season.

Those 14 games were terrible and it was embarrassing for the Leafs that they clearly signed a player who was damaged goods.

The other offseason signing Trevling made was Ryan Reaves. Giving a 37 year old enforcer with a history of being scratched in the playoffs a three-year deal for more than the league minimum was almost as embarrassing as signing a broken defenseman.

During the season, Treliving performed the worst, though. It was clear the Maple Leafs needed a goaltender and defensive help. Treliving addressed these issues by standing by Ilya Samsonov, whom Treliving himself put on waivers earlier in the season and brought in Ilya Lybushkin, Joel Edmundson and Connor Dewar.

Going into the playoffs with a goalie who was on waivers in January and the worst puck-moving and least mobile blue-line of any team in the league was an absolute joke.

Long story short, Treliving did not do a good job of giving this team the best chance to win, honestly during the season he probably did more harm than good, we'll talk more about this throughout this piece, but for reasons I just detailed, Treliving failed as in his first chance as the Maple Leafs General Manager.

Grading Sheldon Keefe's Season as Toronto Maple Leafs Head Coach

The Toronto Maple Leafs exited out of the first round of the NHL Playoffs, but you could hardly blame the coach for their loss.

I am having a tough time grading Keefe because his General Manager gave him little to no help. Keefe was stuck having to dress the same liabilities for most of the season, but Keefe did make his fair share of poor decisions, so ultimately, I decided to give him a C.

Sheldon Keefe Grade: C

I wanted to give Keefe a higher grade than this, as he was hung out to dry by the front office for the most part. However, I could not go any higher, considering we saw T.J. Brodie play almost 800 minutes on the top pairing with Morgan Reilly.

Maple Leafs fans had been begging Keefe to change this pairing since last year's playoff run. It was very evident to me and a lot of others that Brodie could no longer handle a top pairing role. With hindsight being 20/20, Keefe's stubbornness to keep Brodie on the top pairing for this long only looks worse on him, considering he has healthy-scratched Brodie for all but one playoff game.

Outside of Brodie, there is a lot of lineup decisions you could knit pick and it is all hindsight, but the only other lineup stuff I feel is worth mentioning is Sheldon Keefe's usage of Nicholas Robertson. We will get into how good Robertson was for the Leafs later in this article, but the fact that Robertson lost minutes to Ryan Reaves late in the season was a borderline fireable offence.

Outside of lineup-related talks, it is hard not to question Leafs' competence as a coach when the Leafs continue to have the same problem scoring goals in the playoffs every single years. Sure, it's nice that the Leafs big stars are defensively responsible, but maybe it is time to let them fly?

I gave Keefe the C because I don't think anything he really had an effect on this team one way or another, It just felt like he was the face behind the bench.

It is no surprise that the Leafs moved on from Keefe, but I think the front office and the goaltenders deserve far more blame than Keefe does for the Maple Leafs slightly underperforming this season.

Grading Toronto Maple Leaf Forwards

Auston Matthews Grade: A++

This one is as expected right?

It was not hard to assign a grade to the guy who led the NHL by miles in goals scored and will finish with votes for the Hart Trophy and Selke Trophy.

Although Matthews was not able to get the 70th goal he was chasing, he set the record for the most scored in a single season in the salary cap era, breaking Alex Ovechkin's record of 65 goals set in 2005-06.

Matthews dominated both ends of the ice this season; dominant, you can't debate that fact either. Being one of the best players in the NHL this season, I am not going to go too deep into this grade as it feels self-explanatory. I will save some words for the more controversial grades I will hand out.

You would have liked to see Matthews do better in the playoffs, but he is excused because of health reasons.

Mitch Marner Grade: A

There is always a lot of garbage spewed about Mitch Marner during the playoffs, but there is no denying this guy is a top-tier player in the NHL. During the regular season, Marner missed some time due to an ankle injury, but he still finished the year with 85 points and was on pace for 101 points if he had.

Sure Marner could look to shoot and score more often, but once again Marner led this team in primary assists, which is huge considering a lot of hockey fans have put more weight into primary assists rather than goals scored when trying to discredit Matthews Hart Trophy chances.

Marner impacts the game in so many ways. He is excellent on the defensive end, phenomenal on the powerplay and penalty kill, and has some of the best vision in the NHL. I refuse to believe that the Maple Leafs could trade Mitch Marner and find equal value in return, as some people have suggested.

William Nylander Grade: A

In some ways, I see the Nylander and Marner as similar players. Both are exceptional playmakers, Nylander only trailed Marner by four primary assists but ended up having three point total assists (granted Nylander played 13 more games)

Where these two differ is in their scoring ability and defense. While Marner is one of the best defensive wingers in the NHL, Nylander leaves a lot to be desired on that side of the puck.

But Nylander more than makes up for it by putting the puck in the back of the net.

Nylander finished the year with 40 goals which was good enough to finish tied for 15th is goals scored this season. In addition, Nylander's 98 points was the 10th most by any player this season and top his career high in points by 11. To me, he was one of the best players in the NHL this season and deserves a grade that reflects that.

John Tavares Grade: B

For the first time in his career, it looked like John Tavares lost a step, but that is likely more to do with his unlucky totals than his actual play.

Tavares is now 33 years old and is contracted for one more season by the Maple Leafs. He spent most of this season playing alongside William Nylander, who had a career year, but did most of his damage on the power-play.

JT finished the year with only 65 points, 15 points less than he had last year. Tavares, however, posted on-ice 5v5 numbers that were on par with his best years. He had one of the lowest shooting percentage seasons he's ever had.

Despite having good underlying advanced analytics, this did not translate into production on the stat sheet, as far as Tavares standards go, this season was quite disappointing. Still, he took on a defensive role in the playoffs and more or less shut-down David Pastrnak. You'd like to see more production, but the underlying numbers remain strong.

Nicholas Robertson Grade: A+

This is the first name I have mentioned where I feel the need to specify that I am grading based on the player's performance compared to their expectations coming into the season rather than grading based on overall performance compared to other players in the league.

Obvously, if we are only going off of year long performance, there is no way Robertson could have the same grade as Marner and Nylander, but Robertson took advantage of every minute he got on the ice and that is how I landed on an A+, let me explain...

During the regular season, Robertson only got into 56 games which was a career high for him. Primarily playing at the bottom of the lineup, Robertson was able to score 14 goals and record a total of 27 points.

Robertson recorded all but four of these points at five-on-five while only playing 584 minutes. This was good enough for Robertson to rank fourth on the Leafs in points per 60 minutes and second in goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five. I liked what I saw out of Robertson. I think he is ready for a much more significant role next year.

Max Domi Grade: B-

Despite a slow start to the season, Domi turned himself into one of Toronto's most productive players at five-on-five, but he also has to be extremely sheltered to make this happen.

Domi led the Leafs in primary assists per 60 minutes and finished second on the team in five-on-five points per 60. Unfortunately, he gives a lot of that basck with his off-the-puck play, which is terrible.

As the year went on, Domi got more comfortable with this team. When Mitch Marner went down with a high ankle sprain, Domi was moved up to the top line to play with Auston Matthews. This is really when Domi started to shine.

Through March and April, Domi averaged 0.80 points per game, with all of these points coming at five-on-five. The only reason Domi did not get a higher grade was his defensive performance which made it very hard for Keefe to ice a balanced lineup.

Domi ranked in the bottom five Maple Leafs in both on-ice goals against and expected goals against per 60 minutes, but he masked this by having a goal share percentage above 50% while on the ice. All in all, Domi had a decent first year in a Leafs uniform.

Tyler Bertuzzi Grade: C+

I had an extremely tough time assigning Bertuzzi a grade. I broke this down in detail about a month ago, but Bertuzzi went from being the most unlucky player in the NHL throughout the first half of the season to the luckiest in the league for the second half of the season.

From February 24th to the end of the regular season, Bertuzzi was tied for third in five-on-five goals in the NHL, but for the year, he ranked 82nd in five-on-five goals and 96th in five-on-five points.

Despite being healthy for a full season for the first time in a long time and having a late-season hot streak, I just could not justify giving Bertuzzi a higher grade considering Domi was much more productive offensively throughout the entire season for a cheaper price.

Bobby McMann Grade: A+

McMann was phenonmenal is his rookie season with the Toronto Maple Leafs, he tallied 15 goals and 24 points after playing his first game of the year on November 11th. Following his season debut, McMann made it extremely tough to not have him in the lineup.

McMann ranked third on the Maple Leafs in goals for per 60, fourth in expected goals per 60 and sixth in points per 60 minutes at five-on-five.

McMann was also very good defensively this season, turning the puck over more than he gave away. He also ranked among the top five Leafs in on-ice goals against per 60 minutes at five-on-five. Much like Robertson, McMann took advantage of every opportunity given to him this season, which is the main reason I have given him such a high grade.

Matthew Knies Grade: B

Knies's offensive production is somewhat hard to assess. For most of the first half of the season, he played alongside Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, but in the latter half of the season, he spent most of his time buried in the Leafs bottom six forwards.

But with Knies, the offensive production is not what I want to highlight here. Knies is turning into a true power forward. He ranked among the top five percent of forwards in forecheck involvement this season while taking the puck away more than he gave it away.

Knies was also one of the most physical forwards on this Leafs team. If he can continue to grow his offensive game, he will be very good for the Maple Leafs for years to come. Given this was his rookie season, I am very optimistic for Knies's future.

He was great in the playoffs.

Pontus Holmberg Grade: B

Holmberg was in his second season with the Leafs, last year he played in 37 games, but got into 54 games this season. Much like Knies, I am not to concerned with Holmberg's offensive production considering he ranked in the top 13 percent of forwards in defensive wins-above-replacement (WAR).

Holmberg is the prototypical third-line center every coach loves. He ranked in the top seven percent of forwards in forecheck involvement while being positionally sound on the defensive end. Holmberg drew more penalties than he took and took the puck away more than he gave it away.

Right now, he is a little raw offensively, but with more NHL experience I expect that to improve as well. The Maple Leafs are going to be very lucky to have this guy for only $800,000 next season. Still, while it's not his fault, he was a massive downgrade from having Ryan O'Reilly at 3C.

David Kamph Grade: D-

I know Kamph only makes $2.4 million dollars and plays on the fourth line, but he had his worst season with the Maple Leafs yet. McMann, Robertson, Jarnkrok, Holmberg and Knies were all more effective than Kamph was this year while making less money.

Kamph ranked in the bottom 13 percent of forwards in offensive WAR and in the bottom 50 percent in defensive WAR. On the year he had the third worst goal share percentage and the worst high-danger chance share at five-on-five on the Maple Leafs.

You'd like to be able to rely on your fourth line defensively at the very least, but Sheldon Keefe could not do that, and Kamph was a big part of that playing the biggest role on that fourth line as the Center. As the most expensive 4th liner in the NHL it's hard to justify his role on the team.

Ryan Reaves Grade: F

Reaves is quite literally useless, he was on the ice for the most five-on-five goals against per 60 minutes and had the worst on-ice goal share percentage on the Maple Leafs. Reaves also averaged the second-lowest points per 60 minutes on this team. Sure he hits people, but I will go to the grave saying hits are the most useless stat in hockey. All Reaves did this year was take minutes from younger guys with a lot higher potential.

He also caused the first goal against in two of the Leafs four playoff losses.

Calle Jarnkrok Grade: C-

Despite getting into 52 games this regular season, it feels a little unfair to critisize Jarnkrok too harshly considering he missed short stints of games dealing with multiple different injuries this season, it felt like he could not get in a consistent rythem playing and playing with the same group of guys.

However, in the games Jarnkrok did play, he only averaged 0.40 points per game compared to his 0.53 point per game pace last year. Even though Jarnkrok was in and out of the lineup, he felt invisible often, which isn't necessarily a bad thing because he rarely made defensive mistakes. But overall, his season was very mediocre.

Morgan Reilly Grade: B-

I know that some of you are wondering how Morgan Reilly got a B- when he was one of four defensemen to make the NHL all-star game. Honestly, Reilly did not deserve to be in that game, and I am not going to let the biased voters impact my thoughts on Reilly's performance with the Leafs this season.

Given that he was voted as one of the top four defensemen in the NHL you would like to think that he would be performing around that standard, but is not even close to what happened. Reilly did have a good offensive year again having 17 more points than he finished with last year, but finished outside to top 10 in most points by a defenceman and finished with the 18th most points at five-on-five while spending a ton of time on the ice with the leagues leading scorer.

In addition to that, Reilly ranked in the bottom 12 percent of defensemen in defensive WAR and finished 65th among defensemen in five-on-five on-ice goal share finished 123rd among defensemen in five-on-five expected goal share percentage who played 500 minutes or more, while also being on the ice for the most goals against at five-on-five per 60 minutes of any Leaf defensemen outside of John Klingberg.

If Reilly wants to be respected as one of the best defensemen in the NHL, he will have to become much more responsible for the defensive side of the puck.

Jake McCabe Grade: A

McCabe ended up having a career offensive year in his first full season with the Maple Leafs, but that should not be too shocking considering he played for the best five-on-five offense in hockey.

Outside of the box score, McCabe excelled at getting the puck into forwards' hands, ranking in the top 14 percent of defensemen in neutral zone shot assists and in the top 29 percent defensive zone shot assists. McCabe was also very good denying the opposition entry into the at of offensive zone and was also excellent at denying chances off the rush.

All in all, McCabe was one of the few reliable defenders this Leafs team had, but if there was one thing he has to improve going into next season is his defensive zone puck retrievals as he ranked in the bottom five percent of defensemen in retrieval success which was the Maple Leafs biggest issue throughout the whole season.

He was the Leafs best defenseman this year, and considering his dirt-cheap contract, provided some of the best value in the entire NHL.

Timothy Liljegren Grade: B+

Liljegren was a bit tougher to grade as he could be wildly inconsistent at times and I thought he was being underused early in the season. Despite these two things, Liljegren ended up having a great year.

He ranked in the top 15 percent of defensemen in offensive WAR while tying his career high in points and also ranked in the top 29 percent of defensemen in defensive WAR.

Liljegren really excelled at moving the puck up the ice to create offensive zone chances while also being very good at preventing chances off the rush on the defensive side.

But despite being good a preventing chances off of the rush, Liljegren gave up the blue line far to often allowing opponents clean entries into the offensive end, if he can improve in this area I see zero reason why Liljegren can't play a top-four role next season.

T.J Brodie Grade: F

Looking back on this year, Brodie's best days are behind him. He ranked below the league average in both offensive and defensive WAR.

The one bright spot in Brodie's game this season was his denial rate when opponents tried to answer the defensive zone. However, when an opponent got past the blueline with possession Brodie stunk at preventing chances off the rush and in addition to that, when he did force a dump-in he was even worse going back to retrieve the puck as he ranked in the bottom 12% of defensemen in retrival success.

All I can say is thank goodness his contract is over. Brodie may have been one of the most overpaid players in hockey this season.

Simon Benoit Grade: C+

I think this is one you could pretty much argue any grade you wanted. This year, Benoit was excellent defensively ranking in the top 28% of defensemen in defensive WAR and in the top 27% in penalty kill WAR.

However, Benoit is an abysmal puck mover ranking in the bottom one percent of defensemen in zone exits and in the bottom two percent in exit success rate while also being a complete blackhole in the offensive end.

As good as Benoit is defensively, he's so bad offensively that it almost doesn't matter. His errors kill any effectiveness he has because without scoring, there is no way to make up for them.

Mark Giordano Grade: B

Giordano battled through multiple injuries this season, which kept him out of just under half of the Maple Leafs games. But at 40 years old, this is something we could have probably expected from the guy who has blocked the most shots in NHL History.

Despite the injuries, Giordano was very productive when he was in the lineup. He finished second among Leafs defensemen who played 20 or more games in five-on-five goal percentage and second in five-on-five expected goal percentage.

Giordano ranked in the top 22 percent of defensemen in offensive WAR and the top 33 percent in defensive WAR; the only reason I can't grade him higher is that we did not see enough of him.

Hopefully, Gio is willing to come back again on the league minimum to play the seventh defenseman role, but I would not be shocked to see him hang the skates up after getting beat up this season.

Connor Timmins Grade: A-

This might be the most controversial grade so far because Timmins only played 25 games and was a healthy scratch for most of the season. However, I think he deserved way more playing time but was being held out of the lineup for reasons that can only be fixed get getting more playing time.

But anyway, let's start with what Timmins did well. While on the ice, Timmins averaged the most goals for and expected goals for of any Maple Leafs defensemen while also leading the defensive core in Corsi, Fenwick, shots on goal, scoring chance and high-danger chance percentage while on the ice at five-on-five.

The two areas of concern with Timmins were the amount of penalties he took, almost a full minor penalty more per 60 minutes than he drew, and his giveaways. Timmins averaged the second most giveaways per 60 minutes among Leafs defensemen who played 20 or more games, but even still, Timmins averaged fewer giveaways per 60 than Joel Edmundson and Ilya Lybushkin, who played every day since joining the Leafs.

With more consistent minutes, I think Timmins could have fixed both of these issues, handling the puck and playing defense at NHL speed are two areas that need consistent reps, to get better. But outside of that TImmins made the most of every chance he got, I loved his impact this year when he got in the lineup.

Ilya Lybushkin Grade: C+

Lybushkin was aqquired at the trade deadline from the Anaheim Ducks for a third round pick. This was a horrible deal considering the Florida Panthers paid the same price for Vladimir Tarasenko, but that is here nor there when talking about his performance in the blue and white late in the season.

I will be the first to admit that the Lybushkin pick was not as bad as I thought it would be. He actually pairs fairly well with Morgan Reilly and they make a competent pairing. But, that said, it's just a bad decision to play a player like this so high in the lineup.

He did a good job limiting expected goals against and high-danger goals while he was on the ice, but he is a horrendous puck mover averaging 2.36 more giveaways than takeaways per 60 minutes.

But again, everyone knew about Lybuskin's puck moving dificencies when the trade was made, given I thought he played better than expectation, I've given him a grade slightly above average.

Joel Edmundson Grade: F

On the surface, Edmunson's numbers look good if you only look at his goal share while on the ice for the Maple Leafs, but I think this can be more attributed to the goaltenders playing well when he was on the ice rather than Edmundson's ability to prevent chances.

I say this because, in his nine regular-season games with the Maple Leafs, he averaged the second-most expected goals against per 60 minutes, next to John Klingberg. While he was on the ice, Maple Leafs goalies saved 2.85 goals above expected per 60 minutes.

Edmundson struggled to get the puck out of his own end having corsi, fenwick, shot on goal and scoring chance percentages all at 50% or below while also giving the puck away 2.30 more times than he took it away per 60 minutes.

In addition to all of that, Edmundson also found himself in a penalty-kill role after joining the team, which he was laughably bad at. On average, he was on the ice for four more goals per 60 minutes on the penalty kill than any other Leaf defensemen.

Worst of all, in the playoffs he kept finding himself with the puck during key moments of the game in the offensive zone. Had literally anyone else been there to take those chances, the Leafs would likely still be playing.

Ilya Samsonov Grade: D

What a roller coaster ride it was watching Ilya Samsonov this season.

He went from being the worst goalie in the NHL up until he was put on waivers. But he came back to the NHL at the start of Feburary and closed the season on a 15-4-2 record after being recalled.

But despite his recovery, Samsonov finished with the worst goals-against-average and save percentage of his career. Despite his late season recovery, I can't justify a grade higher than this considering how bad he was for majority of the season and the first four games of the playoffs.

Joseph Woll Grade: A+

With Woll, I think it is only fair to grade his performance before his injury. He did make four regular season stats since returning from the high ankle sprain, but I do not think he was at 100% yet playing these games.

Before the injury, Woll ranked seventh in goals saved above expected per 60 minutes, ninth in save percentage and eighth in high-danger save percentage among goalies who made 10 starts before December 7th when Woll went down with the injury.

I think Woll was phenomenal before the injury. Hopefully he can stay healthy for the entire season next year so we can see what he can really do. He stole several games for the Leafs and was amazing when called upon in the playoffs.

Martin Jones Grade: C

Jones had a great run around New Years when the Leafs went on a West Coast Trip and had to rely on him. But even with that hot streak he barely broke .900.

He finished the year, with a 2.87 goals-against-average and a .902 save percentage, while it was a somewhat small sample size, both of these numbers are the best he has posted in a season since 2017-18.

(All stats for this article from naturalstattrick.com, nhl.com and moneypuck.com. Some info from Capfriendly,com).

I think he did a great job coming in and making some big saves for the Toronto Maple Leafs at a time when they were really starting to struggle, but the lower grade is for not being good enough to take over from Samsonov, who he should have had no trouble stealing the net from.