The 2025-26 Toronto Maple Leafs season is coming fast but before the games truly matter, we at Editor In Leaf are taking a look at one player everyday until the puck is dropped, and what we could expect from them this time around.
Steven Lorentz is who he is. A player who has found a home on his own Toronto Maple Leafs, who earned a three-year contract extension to stay after having a successful season, and will be a prominent figure in the bottom six.
But, while we all assume that if he just stays at his normal pace and remains exactly the same then that's fine, is there actually a different level? Can the 29-year-old winger suddenly evolve into something more?
What did we see from Lorentz last season?
Lorentz matched his career-high in games played with 80 last season, and in some weird coincidence, matched his career-high in points with 19. Now the owner of two separate 80-game, 19-point seasons, Lorentz was just someone that the Leafs could plug into the fourth line and not have to worry about.
When Lorentz was on the ice, the Leafs had 46.1 percent of the shot attempt share at 5-on-5, but because of some percentages leaning his way and the team overall focused less on quantity of shots but more on quality, they were actually the better team during those minutes. Well, maybe better results. With Lorentz out there for those 741 minutes at 5-on-5 this season, the Leafs had 55.14 percent of the goals share, which ranked 11th on the team among all regular skaters.
He was a cog in the machine and Craig Berube, while used him seldomly, still found him incredibly useful. Among all regular Leafs skaters, only David Kampf had a higher percentage of his starts in the defensive zone. Basically, 75 percent of Lorentz's zone starts was when Berube needed his team to win the faceoff and clear the defensive end to then get someone else on the ice for the offense. That's still a pretty useful role. Will that trend continue? Maybe.
What should we expect from Lorentz this season?
Is there even a point in going any further than just saying "the same"? If Lorentz scored any more points, we would be concerned that they aren't going to someone higher in the lineup. If Lorentz suddenly saw a promotion, we would assume that a whole lot of players are injured.
The 29-year-old winger is almost in just a perfect position. Next to Scott Laughton, those two will form the fourth-line duo that can break down offenses and generally prevent goals better than score them. That's all they need to do and they have been doing it all right so far.
Just keep to the status quo and we expect things to be just fine. Lorentz's name will come up a few times throughout the year as a scorer and someone who can pop here and there, but what we generally expect is to just be satisified with his fourth-line play and not a whole lot more.