There’s a reason the Maple Leafs’ forward picture feels a little different this time around. Auston Matthews and William Nylander still sit at the center of it all, but the conversation around Toronto’s future is drifting beyond the NHL roster and into the prospect pool. And once you do that, one question jumps right out: where are the goals going to come from?
Steven Ellis of Daily Faceoff pointed to that issue while looking at the Leafs’ prospects, and his read is pretty clear. Gavin McKenna brings a lot of offense, but he looks more like a playmaker than a pure finisher. That doesn’t mean he can’t score - he put up 15 goals and 51 points in 35 games as a freshman at Penn State - but his biggest strength may be the way he sees the ice and makes the players around him better.
That distinction matters. NHL teams can find useful role players, defensive defensemen and bottom-six help.
What they can’t just order up is a reliable 25- or 30-goal scorer. Toronto’s draft history makes that even more relevant, because the club has rarely been in position to pick near the top and has often moved picks and prospects at the trade deadline when the NHL team needed help.
That approach makes sense in the moment, but it also leaves a gap down the line.
And Matthews makes the whole thing more obvious. When he’s healthy and playing like Auston Matthews, Toronto has one of the best goal scorers in the world. When he’s not, the offense changes fast.
That’s why the point here isn’t that the prospect system is broken. McKenna could still become a star, and there are other interesting young players in the organization. The concern is simpler than that: the Leafs may eventually need a natural finisher, and they don’t appear to have one in abundance right now.
Maybe the bigger immediate swing comes behind the bench. Jim Hiller is the new coach, and his Los Angeles teams played a very different style from what Toronto showed last season. The Kings were strong possession teams, limited chances against, and during Hiller’s time behind the bench they had the NHL’s second-best goals-against rate while ranking among the league’s better puck-control clubs.
That’s a pretty appealing fit for a Leafs team that spent too much time without the puck. With Matthews and Nylander, that’s a problem.
Those two are at their best when they’re attacking and driving offense, not spending shift after shift stuck in their own end. The more Toronto has to chase, the less dangerous its best players become.
Hiller’s challenge is obvious: he doesn’t need to reinvent the Leafs, but he does need to get them playing with the puck more often. There’s a catch, though.
His most recent season in Los Angeles wasn’t nearly as strong as the first full one. The Kings fell from 105 points in 2024-25 to 90 points in 2025-26, and their offense stalled badly, finishing with 220 goals, 29th in the NHL.
So Toronto’s path isn’t as simple as “play better defense” or “find another scorer.” It has to be both. The Leafs need enough structure to control the game, but enough freedom to let Matthews, Nylander, McKenna and the rest of the skill group actually create.
That’s where the real hope sits. If Hiller can get Toronto to play faster by thinking faster, keeping possession and living more often in the offensive zone, the Leafs may find out they already have more offense than last season made it look like.
The goal-scoring issue is real. But the fix may not be another name from the pipeline. It may be giving the scorers Toronto already has a lot more time with the puck.
In Other News...
Canadiens Goalie Battle Is Putting Serious Pressure On One Familiar Name
The Canadiens goaltending picture is starting to take shape, and for the Maple Leafs it is one more reminder of how quickly the margins can shift in a division where every roster decision gets magnified. Montreal appears to be leaning toward Jakub Dobes as its starter with Jacob Fowler behind him, a setup that leaves Sam Montembeault in a precarious spot because of waiver concerns, and it is the kind of internal squeeze Toronto knows well when it comes to balancing talent, timing and roster flexibility.
For the Leafs, the bigger roster conversation is still centered on Morgan Rielly, whose game is being reassessed as the team looks for ways to keep his offense in play without asking him to carry the same defensive burden. The next phase could determine whether he settles into a different sort of role, one that better fits the roster around him, or whether Toronto eventually has to make an even tougher call if that adjustment does not produce the kind of fit the club wants. [Read more 🡒]
Morgan Rielly Trade Talk Just Got A Crucial New Measuring Stick
The veteran defense market is getting a useful reference point in Detroit, where Justin Faulks situation has become one to watch. The Red Wings brought him in at last years trade deadline, but with turnover on the roster and younger players like Axel Sandin-Pellikka pushing into the picture, his place in the long-term plan is less certain than it once looked.
For the Maple Leafs, that matters because Toronto has been monitoring Faulks market as a way to gauge what a veteran blue-liner with a meaningful cap hit can bring back. Morgan Rielly sits in a different category entirely, with four years left on his deal and a no-movement clause, so any conversation around him is more complicated than a simple like-for-like comparison. Still, if Faulk draws real interest, it could sharpen the Leafs view of just how difficult it would be to move a defenseman on Riellys terms. [Read more 🡒]
Maple Leafs May Need To Rethink 3 Big Training Camp Assumptions
Training camp has a way of hardening opinions before anyone has actually seen the lineup in motion, and the Maple Leafs are already carrying a few assumptions into September. John Tavares is often discussed as if his game has slipped badly with age, while Gavin McKenna is being treated like a player who has to be launched straight onto the top line, and Easton Cowan is still mostly viewed through the lens of a winger rather than anything else.
A closer look suggests Toronto may want to slow down on all three judgments. NHL tracking data points to Tavares being less cumbersome than the public narrative says, McKenna could have more room to grow into a role instead of being rushed into the spotlight, and Cowan might be worth a look down the middle if the Leafs want to explore different options. None of that settles the camp questions, but it does make the early roster debates a little more interesting than the usual guesswork. [Read more 🡒]