The Toronto Maple Leafs may or may not have lost their third straight game last night (this was written ahead of time) but the results don't change anything.
The Toronto Maple Leafs know what they need and the time to act is now.
Patience is good most of the time, but the Leafs are well past that point. Several years past it, in fact. They don't have Marner signed. They don't have any guarantee that either of their goalies will be good a year from now. Their blue-line ain't getting any younger.
And there's a lot of work to do, so....
The Toronto Maple Leafs need to aggressively improve their roster NOW
- The Leafs lack centres. On their current roster, they have two quality NHL centres in John Tavaers and Auston Matthews. Fraser Minten is pretty good, but can't be relied upon to score like they need. The Leafs could stick with Minten and acquire a winger, or trade for a centre. It doesn't really matter, as long as the player acquired is a star.
- The Leafs need one star defenseman and one star forward to play in their bottom-six. Pacioretty, Robertson and McMann just don't cut it. They are question marks, and the Leafs need a real answer whose scoring is not conditional on a 10% chance to stay healthy or in-season improvement.
- The Leafs have no cap space. If they want to do major in-season roster surgery, they could clear some cap space, but otherwise they are in trouble.
- To get cap space, they can move Kampf, Reaves and Domi and get back $7.5 million. Additionally, they could move Oliver Ekman-Larsson for an additional $3.5 million. Obviously, this would require Treliving to honestly assess and correct his two big summer time blunders, and I'm not holding my breath for it.
- Assuming they clear the cap space, their best trade chips are Easton Cowan, Fraser Minten and Nikita Grebenkin. Each should have more value than a first rounder, but they also have those for 2026 and 2027 and they have to be in play.
This information tells us that improving the Leafs beyond what we currently see right now will require the following: 1. Treliving admits he errored on Domi and OEL and self-corrects 2. The Leafs ditch three + players from their current roster 3. They trade their top prospects 4. They trade from their limited cache of draft picks.
In my opinion, Auston Matthews' prime and the fact Marner and Tavares are a UFAs means the Leafs need to act very aggresively and commit to doing all four things. The only problem is that nothing about Brad Treliving's history as an NHL manager suggests he will do that. Brad is a play-it-safe guy at heart, and unfortunately, unless he acts way out of character, the Leafs season is going to depend on the guys they have right now, which isn't anywhere close to good enough.