The Maple Leafs took a swing on Matias Maccelli last summer, paid a third-round pick to get him, and still never really let him settle in. Now he’s in Long Island with another chance to become the kind of playmaker Toronto thought it was buying.
Toronto went into the offseason after losing Mitch Marner to the Vegas Golden Knights and searched for ways to replace some of that creativity. Maccelli, acquired from the Utah Mammoth, arrived with a strong endorsement from Shane Doan and with his own comments before the season suggesting a player eager to seize the moment.
Instead, the fit never took. Maccelli was pushed into a bottom-six role, looked uncomfortable, and eventually did not receive a qualifying offer, which sent him into free agency. He has since signed with the New York Islanders, where he is expected to be part of an offense that is changing in a big way this summer.
The part that stands out most is how little Toronto actually committed to the experiment. Maccelli was supposed to be the winger Auston Matthews needed, but the two barely shared the ice before Craig Berube shut it down. Natural Stat Trick shows they spent 49 games on the same line for just 92:34 total, which works out to 1:53 of ice time per game together.
That’s a far cry from the way Toronto handled Max Domi and Matthews. Those two played 58 games together and logged 446:10 of ice time, or 7:41 per game. In other words, the Leafs gave Domi and Matthews more than 4.5 times the runway in only nine additional games.
Maccelli spent much of the season bouncing around the lineup, and the production came late, when the year was nearly done. After the Olympic break, he posted seven goals and 14 points. With a new linemate seemingly every night, chemistry was always going to be hard to find, and he made the best of the situation.
Toronto’s priorities also worked against him. Berube leaned into building a more stable defensive team, and that meant sacrificing some of the creativity that might have given Maccelli a longer leash in the top six.
The Islanders should give him a very different setup. He’s expected to get more minutes and won’t be buried behind a stack of star forwards. With Calum Ritchie in the mix, using Maccelli in a role that helps avoid rushing Ritchie makes sense.
Bo Horvat, Mat Barzal and Matthew Schaefer will handle much of the offense, but the rest of the roster does not have a ton of scoring punch. Maccelli’s 39 points last season would have ranked sixth on the Islanders, and his 14 goals would have placed him eighth, ahead of Ritchie.
That’s why he’s being viewed as a top-six creativity piece and a power-play factor. He’s not being asked to walk in and carry the whole offense, but he should be able to complement the players around him.
If he clicks quickly and starts looking like the player who put up 106 points from 2022-24, Toronto will be left with a clear reminder of what happens when a team doesn’t give a new piece enough time to breathe. In hockey, chemistry usually takes time. The Leafs may have learned that too late.
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