Maple Leafs fans may want to keep one eye on the NHL’s expansion plans, because the next wave of league growth could create some real headaches for Toronto.
The league is expected to add a 33rd team, or 34th depending on how you look at it, around 2030. That’s still a ways off, but clubs around the NHL are already thinking about how an expansion draft could reshape their rosters. For the Leafs, the issue is less about a new team arriving and more about who might be left exposed when it does.
A recent The Athletic exercise looked at what would happen if an expansion draft took place in 2027, and the result was ugly for Toronto. In that scenario, the Leafs would have lost Artur Akhtyamov because they wouldn’t have been able to protect him.
The reason comes down to the expansion rules. Players with no-movement clauses must be protected, and that immediately tightens the list of available options.
In the hypothetical setup, the Leafs would have been forced to protect seven players, each carrying a full no-movement clause. Up front, that would mean Auston Matthews, William Nylander and John Tavares.
On defense, Darren Raddysh, Morgan Rielly and Chris Tanev would also be protected.
Under the 7-3-1 format, that leaves little room to maneuver. Jake McCabe, for instance, would be vulnerable.
That’s the kind of roster squeeze Toronto will need to plan for well before the real expansion draft arrives, likely in 2029 or 2030. By then, the picture could look very different.
Matthews is under contract through 2028, and the assumption here is that he extends, which would keep him in the protected mix. Nylander is signed through 2032.
Tavares, meanwhile, will be a free agent in 2029, which would give the Leafs a chance to wait until after the draft before re-signing him, if he’s still playing at age 38.
Tanev, Raddysh and Rielly would still need protection. The only other player off the books in this setup would be Bobrovsky.
That reality points to a clear lesson for Toronto: the team probably won’t be eager to hand out full no-movement clauses to free-agent signings in the future unless those players are already the kind the Leafs would want to protect anyway.
There’s also the possibility of getting ahead of the problem. Toronto did exactly that for the 2021 expansion draft, acquiring Jared McCann from the Pittsburgh Penguins with the specific goal of exposing him to Seattle. The Kraken took him, just as expected.
A similar approach could be in play again in 2029. It wouldn’t be a shock if John Chayka starts positioning pieces in advance so the future expansion club finds them more appealing than someone currently on the roster.
It’s not clear whether Chayka had expansion on his mind this summer, but one detail stands out: nine of the team’s current contracts expire in 2028. If the draft lands in 2029, the Leafs and their projected $56 million in cap space could end up benefiting from the trade market as other teams scramble to set themselves up.
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