Toronto needs to submit its 23-man roster on Monday before beginning 84-game schedule against Montreal
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Declaring the Maple Leafs to be a better team on the eve of this season must be qualified by how bad things went last year.
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Poor enough for change from the very top to the trenches, the dressing room shaken clear like an Etch-A-Sketch. Now Toronto must measure its upgrades against everyone else in the NHL, starting with its last-place standing in the Atlantic Division.
After one more practice on Monday, the Leafs submit their 23-man roster and begin an 84-game schedule, which starts with a back-to-back at home against the Montreal Canadiens and the New York Islanders on Tuesday and Wednesday, then 14 dates in October.
A review of the new crew by position:
Goaltending
It’s a Leafs Nation thing: Looking too far ahead and fretting what Sergei Bobrovsky will look like at age 41, while still collecting his $7 million US. But in the here and now, the future Hall of Famer is a huge upgrade on the uncertainty plaguing the crease the past few years.
A load-managed Bobrovsky (he will require help from Anthony Stolarz and perhaps Artur Akhtyamov) can easily play in his usual 50-game range. Like the rest of the Leafs trying to rebound, he thinks his 2025-26 fall from grace in Florida was a blip, not the start of a decline.
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But there was a comfort zone for him in the Cats’ system that led to two Stanley Cups, which is much harder to replicate here.
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Defence
By the numbers, if No. 43 and No. 44 succeed (Darren Raddysh and Morgan Rielly) with No. 8 and No. 22 (Chris Tanev, 36, after major surgery with old partner Jake McCabe), the Leafs will cut back on their conference-worst goals-against average from last season.
There’s a huge leap of faith that Rielly can reverse his low confidence and own-zone issues and that the hard-shooting Raddysh can add more than just a power-play bomb. Meanwhile, Tanev only knows one hockey creed: Get in the way to stop the man and puck, which comes with inherent risks.
If the foursome survives all that and Oliver Ekman-Larsson makes his usual contributions with one of Troy Stecher, Nick Blankenburg or Emil Andrae, then a major problem will have been addressed.
Forwards
We’ll get to golden ticket Gavin McKenna in a minute, but first let’s look at the massive overhaul on the third and fourth lines.
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Years of trying to fit square pegs in round holes, such as Nick Robertson and Matias Maccelli last season, gave way to a purpose-built bottom six. Nick Paul and Colton Sissons have been effective with other teams and now get opportunity with a puck hound and sniper on their left side in young Easton Cowan.
The energy line is a bit more of a work in progress, but the already popular Teddy Blueger has at least two belligerents to work with in Zack MacEwen and Brandon Duhaime, while Dakota Joshua works back from injury. The switches came at the expense of the demoted Steven Lorentz, while Bo Groulx could be the lone member of the Calder Cup-champion Marlies to get a spot where it once seemed, pre-John Chayka, that the farmhands would flood the roster at camp.
McKenna could be one of the best insulated first-overall picks in league history with Auston Matthews, John Tavares, William Nylander and Matthew Knies taking the media heat and the checkers. Yet McKenna has willingly and ably stepped into the spotlight of this market, wowing the crowd and his team with speed, agility and passing at camp and in two exhibition games. But he’s yet to face the opposition’s A lineup, play a back-to-back or step on hostile ice in Florida, Boston or Ottawa.
The big experiment up front is Jack Roslovic in Mitch Marner’s old spot on junior pal Matthews’s right side. Their second exhibition game went better than the first for the line, though McKenna might factor there sooner than later depending on Roslovic and Knies.
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