The Toronto Maple Leafs have gotten off to a decent start to their season following a disastrous 2025-26 campaign that saw them miss the playoffs for the first time in 10 years. The Maple Leafs offense, defense and special teams have all had strong starts to the year to help pave way for their success thus far.
However, the goaltending has been a bit more shaky and inconsistent, in particular for former two-time Vezina Trophy winner Sergei Bobrovsky. As a result, to give Toronto the best possible chance of winning every night, they need to seriously need to make an important decision about their crease. The right decision for the Leafs would be to give Anthony Stolarz more playing time going forward.
The Maple Leafs need to make a choice in their crease
After coming off one of his worst seasons ever in his NHL career, Stolarz has bounced back nicely so far in 2026-27 for the Maple Leafs. Through six games of action to date, the 32-year-old veteran goaltender has posted a solid 5-1-0 record with a 2.66 GAA and .910 save percentage. More importantly, he has looked healthy once again and has regained some of his dominant form that he showed during his first year with Toronto back in 2024-25.
On the other hand, Bobrovsky has been off to a rough start for his Maple Leafs tenure thus far. In 10 games played, the 38-year-old goalie has compiled a rather disappointing 3-5-2 record with an alarming 3.29 GAA and .885 save percentage. Those numbers so far has mirrored his underwhelming, regressive season that he had last year with the Florida Panthers, rather than the fine form that he had in the years prior. That in itself could make Leafs fans worry a bit in that what they saw in Bobrovsky last season could actually be real instead of an outlier. On top of that, he has given up three goals or more in all but one start this season, as compared to Stolarz who has allowed more than two goals only twice to date.
However, the sample size is still small, so whether a full-blown regression for Bobrovsky is actually taking place is yet to be determined. But for a competitive division like the Atlantic Division, the Maple Leafs can ill-afford to experiment too much with that and should put themselves in the best position for success right now and not later.
It is not necessarily that we need Stolarz to take over as the starting goaltender for the Leafs, given his injury woes in recent years. But Toronto should go back to the 1A and 1B setup like they had in previous years to help balance the load between two goaltenders that are more than capable of starting on a daily basis. In addition, starting a few less games for Bobrovsky could give him enough time to recharge between starts and thus perform at his top level. As a result, it is time that we see some more of Stolarz with hopes that Bobrovsky can rebound to his prior form with a lighter workload.
Add us as a preferred source on Google