After a season that went off the rails almost from the jump, the Toronto Maple Leafs are being framed as a team that should bounce right back.
The source here calls 2025-26 the “Year from Hell,” and that’s the backdrop for the whole argument. The Leafs missed the playoffs for the first time in a decade last year, but the case being made is that the disaster was a one-off: a bad general manager, a coach who couldn’t generate offense, a wave of injuries, and all the noise that followed Mitch Marner’s departure left the season essentially cooked before it had a chance to breathe.
Even with Marner gone, the belief is that Toronto may have found a new version of him in Gavin McKenna. After winning the NHL Draft Lottery, the Leafs now have a young talent who can feed Auston Matthews and help restore him to the version of himself fans remember. The article puts that upgrade in stark terms, saying the team may have found its new Marner for roughly $11M less per person.
That’s only part of the optimism, though. The bigger point is that Toronto’s track record with Matthews in charge is hard to ignore.
In his first nine years, the Leafs made the playoffs every season and topped 100 points six times. The message is simple: this team has spent most of the Matthews era as a reliable regular-season outfit, and one ugly year doesn’t erase that.
The roster, as described in the source, also looks deeper than it did before. Toronto has added a number-one defenseman and a goaltender who are argued to be the best the team has had in a decade. There’s also a bottom-six that’s said to be new and unique, with Nick Paul singled out as the kind of third-liner who can quietly raise the floor of the lineup.
The Atlantic Division is tougher, sure, but the argument still lands on the same place: there’s no real reason to doubt Toronto’s playoff chances. Tampa Bay and Florida are older, while Detroit, Ottawa and Buffalo are viewed as unproven despite their upside. Winning the Stanley Cup is another matter entirely, but for the regular season, the Leafs are being cast as a team with enough talent to get back into spring hockey.
The only real warning attached to that optimism is health. If injuries hit again, everything can unravel. But if this group stays on the ice, the expectation is clear: the Maple Leafs should be back in the playoffs next season.
In Other News...
Maple Leafs May Have Found A Defense Fit They Rarely Get Cheap
The Maple Leafs added another piece to their blue line pipeline in the 2026 NHL Draft, taking right-shot defenseman Mans Gudmundsson with the 76th overall pick. For a team that has long searched for affordable, homegrown help on defense, the selection checked a few boxes at once: size, puck-moving ability and a physical edge that can be hard to find once the price tag starts climbing.
Gudmundsson is not just a flyer on a later pick, either. Toronto appears to see him as part of a longer-term succession plan for its defense corps, with room for him to keep developing in North America. Whether he becomes the kind of steady, cost-controlled fit the organization is hoping for will depend on how quickly he adapts, but the Leafs clearly think there is more there than a depth add. [Read more 🡒]
Leafs Still Have One Unsettled Goalie Question Before Camp
The Maple Leafs head into camp with their goaltending chart already taking shape around Anthony Stolarz and Sergei Bobrovsky, but it is not hard to see why the room still feels unfinished. Stolarz brings injury concerns into the conversation, while Bobrovskys age makes depth behind them more than a luxury, especially for a team that knows how quickly a crease plan can get complicated over a long season.
One possible answer is a familiar kind of training-camp insurance, with Toronto weighing a veteran option who has NHL experience and just spent time in the KHL. It would not change the outlook at the top of the depth chart, but it would give the Leafs another layer of protection if the kind of goalie trouble that tends to arrive unexpectedly starts to show up again. [Read more 🡒]
John Tavares Maple Leafs Signing Is Back In The Spotlight
John Tavares was back in the spotlight in a very different setting this week, appearing in Tax Court of Canada to challenge a Canada Revenue Agency demand tied to the signing bonus he received when he joined the Maple Leafs in 2018. The dispute centers on how that money should be treated for tax purposes, with the CRA arguing it belonged in the same bucket as regular salary while Tavares and his lawyer say his residency status at the time changes the calculation.
For Toronto, the case is another reminder of how much attention followed the captains arrival and how long the aftershocks from that decision can linger. The court has not ruled yet, leaving one more off-ice storyline hanging over a player whose move to the Maple Leafs already reshaped the franchise and still draws scrutiny years later. [Read more 🡒]