The Toronto Maple Leafs didn’t just get a new 2026-27 schedule on Thursday - they got one of the tougher breaks in the league when it comes to back-to-backs.
That’s the real wrinkle here. The number of back-to-back sets a team plays matters, sure, but the bigger edge often comes from how many times you catch an opponent on the second night of one.
Fatigue changes games. It changes legs, pace, and execution.
And in that department, Toronto came out on the short end.
The Leafs have 11 back-to-backs on the slate, which is right around the NHL average. That part alone doesn’t scream disaster.
The problem is what comes with it: Toronto has only five games where it faces a team playing the second half of a back-to-back. That’s tied with the Winnipeg Jets for the fewest in the league.
Meanwhile, the Montreal Canadiens sit at the other end of the spectrum with 19 such games, the most in the NHL. That’s nearly four times as many chances to catch a tired opponent as Toronto gets.
The schedule comparison has already been making the rounds, with the key distinction laid out in terms of how often teams are dealing with that second-night fatigue. For the Leafs, the answer is: not much. And if the goal is to squeeze out every possible point as they try to get back into the playoffs after last season’s disaster, that’s the kind of detail that can quietly matter a lot.
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