2026-27 NHL team preview: Toronto Maple Leafs
LAST SEASON
The Toronto Maple Leafs’ vibes weren’t quite right entering the 2025-26 season. They couldn’t be when the previous campaign ended with an embarrassing Game 7 home loss to the Florida Panthers in Round 2 of the playoffs and cemented Mitch Marner’s departure from his hometown franchise. Toronto tried to replace its star right winger in the aggregate, but it was difficult to feel enthused on paper over the idea that depth additions such as Matias Maccelli, Nicolas Roy and Dakota Joshua would replicate a 102-point scorer. There was an air of desperation around GM Brad Treliving, a sense that his team had missed its best chance at a Stanley Cup.
The premonitions that the Leafs would take a step back proved correct. Everything that could go wrong went wrong and then some last season. Goaltender Anthony Stolarz regressed massively. Shutdown defenseman Chris Tanev played just 11 games, shelved by a concussion, spinal trauma and a core-muscle injury. Superstar Auston Matthews’ season ended in mid-March with an MCL tear on a controversial knee from the Anaheim Ducks’ Radko Gudas, and Matthews was scoring at the worst rate of his career before then. Treliving’s roster additions proved fruitless, and the Leafs found themselves sellers at the Trade Deadline, shipping out Roy, Scott Laughton and Bobby McMann. Apparently, MLSE didn’t need 82 games to know it was done with Treliving. He was pink-slipped with seven games left in Toronto’s season and the Leafs tumbling from an Atlantic Division title to the basement.
Treliving’s firing launched an offseason of such dramatic franchise overhaul that you’d swear the Leafs were an expansion club. They were determined to pivot back to a data-centric approach after Treliving had gradually made the roster bigger, older and slower, so they brought analytics-minded John Chayka out of exile, named him GM and paired him with inexperienced but respected Leaf legend Mats Sundin as a senior executive advisor. The new duo immediately received an incredibly lucky break when the Leafs won the 2026 NHL Draft Lottery with the fifth-best odds, securing the pick that would get them a new potential superstar in left winger Gavin McKenna.
Chayka, who was an extremely active tinkerer during his previous GM tenure with the Arizona Coyotes, wasted little time wildly making over his roster, perhaps aided by outside enthusiasm over Toronto landing McKenna. Chayka signed the top UFA defenseman and goaltender, respectively in Darren Raddysh and Sergei Bobrovsky; restocked the bottom six with experienced players like Nick Paul and Colton Sissons; took a swing at improving the team’s mobility by trading for undersized analytics darling defenseman Emil Andrae; and added Matthews’ old USA Hockey National Team Development Program linemate in right winger Jack Roslovic. The Leafs replaced coach Craig Berube with Los Angeles Kings castoff Jim Hiller. They changed up the assistant coaching group, which included snatching Daniel Alfredsson from the Ottawa Senators. At this point, we can assume they repaved the underground parking spots at Scotiabank Arena, too. Almost everything has been remade, and this is just a quick glossing-over of what was done given we have a season preview to get to.
Aside from Raddysh’s eight-year extension, almost all Chayka’s additions came on shorter-term deals, indicating that he’s doing everything he can to turn Toronto back into a present-day Stanley Cup contender before Matthews’ contract ends in 2027-28. Can the Leafs do a 180? Or is it too late to save the Matthews era?
KEY ADDITIONS & DEPARTURES
Additions
Gavin McKenna, LW
Darren Raddysh, D
Sergei Bobrovsky, G
Jack Roslovic, RW
Nick Paul, C
Emil Andrae, D
Colton Sissons, C
Teddy Blueger, C
Brandon Duhaime, RW
Nick Blankenburg, D (PTO)
John Chayka, GM
Jim Hiller, head coach
Mats Sundin, senior executive advisor
Departures
Joseph Woll, G (Phi)
Brandon Carlo, D (Stl)
Nick Robertson, RW (Pit)
Matias Maccelli, LW (NYI)
Simon Benoit, D (Phi)
Dennis Hildeby, G (TB)
Calle Jarnkrok, RW (SHL)
Henry Thrun, D (Wpg)
Brad Treliving, GM (March 30)
Craig Berube, head coach
OFFENSE
It was a borderline given that the Leafs would regress offensively sans Marner, who was the NHL’s eighth-leading scorer across his nine seasons with the franchise, and the Leafs’ attack, rendered increasingly boring and dump-and-chase conservative under Berube, backslid as expected last season. They went from seventh to 16th in scoring, albeit the power-play improved significantly when the Leafs replaced assistant coach Marc Savard with Steve Sullivan at midseason.
The Leafs were atrocious offensively at 5-on-5, last in the Eastern Conference in expected goals and scoring chances per 60, all creativity sapped from their attack. Shouldered with a ton of defensive responsibility, Matthews finished with career lows of 27 goals and 53 points across 60 games. Top right winger William Nylander scored at 100-point pace when healthy, ageless center John Tavares managed another 30-goal, 70-point effort, and beastly power forward Matthew Knies was productive, but the Leafs were too top heavy, with only those four players exceeding 20 goals or 39 points. Their shallow attack wasn’t dangerous enough, especially with Matthews never really looking healthy and himself even before his season-ending injury.
So has Chayka made the right repairs? The most important offensive addition up front is McKenna, of course. He doesn’t have Marner’s defensive chops, but McKenna has similar upside as an elite-level playmaker with breathtakingly good hands, and he earned valuable experience leaving major junior early to play against men in the NCAA with Penn State last season. Hiller has been careful to insist the Leafs won’t rush McKenna, but he’s already seeing looks in the top six this preseason and should be one of the league’s top rookies in 2026-27.
The other key newcomer for the Leafs offense is, of course, Raddysh, fresh off a massive breakout with 22 goals and 70 points in 73 games. The career year carries some outlier red flags given it came in Raddysh’s age-29 season, but the numbers were also the result of a major role increase, which will carry over to his new team. Raddysh’s booming shot brings an element the Leafs have lacked for years on their power play, and the threat of it should open up more lanes for Matthews. New assistant coach Alfredsson should also augment the power play; he did a nice job on it with the Senators last season, and the Leafs’ projected PP1 personnel is at least as good as Ottawa’s.
The speedy Roslovic will try to recapture his old chemistry with Matthews and, between the likes of Paul, Sissons, Teddy Blueger and Brandon Duhaime, it appears the Leafs have deepened their forward group. We can also expect more progression from sophomore right winger Easton Cowan, who sponged up some important high-stakes minutes playing for the AHL Calder Cup-winning Toronto Marlies last spring. The Leafs look like a good bet to bulge the twine more this season than last, though nothing will affect the scoreboard more than Matthews’ health, which he claims is 100 percent right now.
DEFENSE
Hey, at least the Leafs scored at a league-average rate last season. They were pure nightmare fuel in their own end, though. Only the Vancouver Canucks allowed more goals. No team allowed more 5-on-5 shots, and only one bled more 5-on-5 scoring chances. Ironically, the team that tried to take on more of a rugged, meat-and-potatoes identity in the Treliving/Berube era defended far worse than the high-flying Kyle Dubas/Sheldon Keefe teams, though the Leafs weren’t helped by Tanev missing almost the whole season and the Leafs’ goaltending regressing so badly.
There’s plenty of reason to believe in defensive improvement this time around, and not merely because Tanev returns to his primary shutdown pair with the steady, speedy Jake McCabe. Additions such as Sissons up front and Andrae on defense suggest the Leafs were serious about their commitment to data-centric decisions. Paul and Blueger have had success in the past defensively as well, including on the penalty kill. And Hiller alone should change the team’s structure; his Kings’ teams finished consistently in the top five in 5-on-5 expected goals against across his three seasons with the club. The big question is whether he’ll continue leaning on Matthews for shutdown work as much as Berube did – or whether Hiller will try to give Matthews a bit more leeway to focus on scoring. The easiest place to start would be to scale back Matthews’ work on the PK, which would also keep him out of harm’s way a bit given his propensity for blocking shots.
It will also be interesting to see what longtime stalwart Morgan Rielly has left. At the start of the season, it appeared his time with the Leafs was ending, but no trade was struck for the $7.5-million defenseman, whose contract carries a full no-movement clause. He remains a heart-and-soul leader, proud to be a Leaf, but he’s no longer a difference maker as a puck-moving defenseman, and he has become a borderline liability in his own end as he’s reached his decline years in his 30s. Will Hiller trot Rielly out there early with Raddysh in significant minutes or try to hide Rielly on a sheltered pair where he can battle easier competition? So far, it appears Hiller is determined to give Rielly a “clean slate” and trust him alongside Raddysh. We’ll see if that lasts.
GOALTENDING
Stolarz and Joseph Woll formed one of the NHL’s best goaltending tandems in 2024-25 and masked the Leafs’ declining defensive play under Berube. Neither netminder was anywhere close to as good last season, with Stolarz in particular never getting on track, which wasn’t a great look after he called out his teammates’ defensive effort in an October game. The Leafs were third in team save percentage in 2024-25 and slipped to 14th – still above average primarily because Dennis Hildeby played so well.
Woll is now a Philadelphia Flyer as part of the Andrae trade, while Hildeby went to the Tampa Bay Lightning for Paul, and Chayka is gambling on reunion between the ex-Panthers duo of Stolarz and Sergei Bobrovsky. ‘Bob’ is a future Hall of Famer, a two-time Stanley Cup champ, a two-time Vezina Trophy winner and a 400-game winner. His work ethic is legendary; he’s as respected as any goalie in the game by his peers. He’ll make a great organizational role model for prospect and fellow Russian Artur Akhtyamov to follow, too. But can Bobrovsky still, uh, stop the puck? It’s one thing to have the worst season of your career and post an .877 SV%, but it’s another to do so at 37 years old. What if Bobrovsky, now 38, is simply washed? The Leafs are banking on his uber-competitive nature to deliver a-la 2002-03 Ed Belfour. Bobrovsky did have very little help on an injury-ravaged Florida team last season, and it’s tough to ever bet against him, but he’ll be defying the odds if he rebounds and plays like an unbeatable star at his age.
COACHING
Hiller is a player’s coach who makes a point of building collaborative and friendly relationships with his players. He has plenty of familiarity with the Leafs’ top stars, having been with the team as an assistant coach from 2015-16 through 2018-19, a period during which Matthews and Nylander broke into the NHL, Rielly ascended into his peak prime and Tavares signed with the team as a UFA. Even though Hiller’s Kings teams had great defensive success, Hiller was more of an offensive mind as an assistant coach, so don’t be surprised if the Leafs play a freer style under him and maintain possession of the puck more than they did under Berube.
ROOKIES
McKenna is the lone rookie expected to crack Toronto’s opening-night lineup, and the hype is justifiably significant. He had 129 points in 56 games as a 17-year-old in his final major-junior season, and his 51 points in 35 games as a college freshman feel slept on. It’s not easy to do that as an 18-year-old. Expect him to deliver a rookie line similar to what Ivan Demidov did for the Montreal Canadiens last season (19-43-62). As for the rest of the Leafs’ rookie crop: their defending-champion farm club should produce some in-season call-ups as injuries arise. William Villeneuve brings the puck movement on defense, Akhtyamov was the AHL playoff MVP, and D-man Ben Danford’s brainy two-way game calls to mind Tanev’s.
BURNING QUESTIONS
1. Will ‘Peak Auston Matthews’ ever return? Hiller can undo all Berube’s deployment decisions. Matthews can tell us over and over how great he feels and play almost 26 minutes in a preseason game (!?). But will the 69-goal monster ever show up in the Blue and White again? If Matthews is just a star now and no longer a superstar, the Leafs’ ceiling lowers significantly.
2. How much good hockey does Chris Tanev have left in him? Like Matthews, Tanev has a clean bill of health. He’s only a season removed from being one of the NHL’s best defensive defensemen. But he has taken an absolute beating across his 16 NHL seasons, showing little regard for his body in blocking shot after shot and absorbing so many hits from forecheckers. Maybe Tanev has another effective season or two in him, but it’s also possible his body breaks down again quickly and he boards a ferry for Robidas Island.
3. What is Easton Cowan’s ceiling? The scrappy Cowan showed flashes as a rookie but never fully earned Berube’s trust. Cowan thrived while entrusted as a go-to offensive player during the Marlies’ Calder Cup run, but he hasn’t broken through as a trusted top-six fixture with the Leafs just yet. Can Cowan, who has impressed Hiller in camp so far, take a major step as a scoring-line forward this season? Or will he settle in as more of an energy guy in the bottom six?
PREDICTION
The Leafs have without question the widest range of outcomes in the NHL this season. Anyone who claims to know what they’ll do is lying. It’s impossible to predict what results Chayka’s delightfully deranged chemistry experiment yields. The Leafs do look like a better team on paper year over year, with the upside to rejoin the playoff picture, but it’s tough to imagine a world in which they’re superior to the Lightning, Panthers, Canadiens, Buffalo Sabres or even the Senators in the Atlantic. The guess here: the Leafs improve to the Wildcard bubble and play meaningful games into early April but still fall short of a playoff berth. The roster construction includes a few too many gambles, as fun as they are.
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