The Maple Leafs have a blue-line problem that could turn costly fast: there are more NHL-ready defensemen in the mix than there are spots to keep them all.
Morgan Rielly, Chris Tanev, Darren Raddysh and Oliver Ekman-Larsson are safe bets to open in the lineup, but the pressure points are lower down the depth chart. Emil Andrae, William Villeneuve, Philippe Myers and Troy Stecher are the names fighting to stay out of the squeeze when camp gets rolling.
That’s where the danger starts. Any defenseman sent to the Marlies has to clear waivers first, and that opens the door for Toronto to lose a useful player without getting anything back. With the roster crowded, the Leafs are not just sorting out competition - they’re trying to avoid handing away an asset.
The organization and general manager John Chayka clearly aimed to build real depth on the back end, and additions like Emil Andrae and Darren Raddysh fit that goal. But the numbers have now gone past simple depth and into a problem of arithmetic. Toronto has more legitimate defensemen than the 23-man roster can hold, which means someone capable of playing in the NHL could be the odd man out no matter how strong his camp is.
William Villeneuve is already confirmed to need waivers, while Troy Stecher and Philippe Myers also look like obvious waiver risks if Toronto tries to send them down. Both veterans have NHL experience, which only raises the chance another team could step in and claim them. Andrae complicates things further because he is no longer exempt from waivers either.
That leaves Chayka with a decision that goes beyond who looks best on the ice in September. He may need to move a sixth or seventh defenseman before waivers do the work for him. If there’s any trade market at all, it would make sense to explore it, because the alternative is simple: one wrong cut, and a serviceable NHL defenseman is gone for nothing.
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For the Leafs, the bigger question is no longer whether help would be useful, but how much future value they are willing to spend to get it now. Toronto has to balance the temptation to add immediate offense against the longer-term benefit of keeping draft capital intact, and a deal like this makes that tradeoff a lot harder to ignore. [Read more 🡒]
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Maple Leafs May Regret Passing On A Low-Cost Scoring Fix
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One name that passed by Toronto was Eeli Tolvanen, who settled on a one-year deal with the Rangers. He is the kind of low-cost swing the Leafs could use more often, and the same goes for veterans such as Gustav Nyquist and Jonathan Drouin, both of whom fit the profile of players willing to take show-me deals. For a club searching for answers beyond its top scorers, those shorter-term bets might be the kind of move that looks obvious only after the fact. [Read more 🡒]