Labour Day is over, and NHL training camp is mere weeks away. This means it is a professional tryout contract (PTO) season, as players without contracts seek camp invites to try to latch onto an NHL roster.
According to Elliotte Friedman, Steven Lorentz is joining the Leafs for a tryout. If he were to earn a contract, this would be the Kitchener native’s fourth team in as many seasons.
Standing at 6’4″, Lorentz is a 28-year-old left-handed winger with some pretty good speed. However, he has struggled offensively in his career, with just 21 goals and 43 points in 230 career games. He will use his body and involve himself physically on the forecheck, although he only has one fight in the NHL.
Coincidentally, the one fight came with the Carolina Hurricanes in the playoffs against Jacob Trouba in response to Trouba running Max Domi. Lorentz played five playoff games that season, and his regular linemates were Domi and Jesper Kotkaniemi (the trio rated well in terms of possession and scoring chances but didn’t score a goal or give one up).
Lorentz spent last season with the Florida Panthers, winning the Stanley Cup and appearing in 16 games of that playoff run. Lorentz averaged just 7:07 in those 16 playoff games, but he did manage to score two goals (three points total) and played in the first four games of the Stanley Cup Finals. In the regular season, he averaged just 8:47 per night (a career low) and scored just one goal (three points) in 38 games. Lorentz’s regular center was Kevin Stenlund on the fourth line.
It is an interesting juxtaposition to last year’s PTO project — Noah Gregor — as the Leafs took a swing on a player moving over from a bad team to see if he would fit on a stronger team with less responsibility and more structure. The Leafs did succeed with Simon Benoit in a similar situation, although he wasn’t on a PTO.
Lorentz is a player who just won a championship on the fourth line, and the Leafs are presumably evaluating if he can fill the same role on their team. This is the third Panther — OEL and Anthony Stolarz are the others — to join the Leafs this offseason.
What is Steven Lorentz’s possible fit on the Maple Leafs?
It’s hard to picture Lorentz as anything more than a fourth liner at this point, given his age and track record of lack of production. At one point last season, Paul Maurice complimented Lorentz for reinventing himself as a fast and physical role player with some penalty-killing ability. In the final few months of the season, he averaged 50 seconds per game on the PK, and in the playoffs, he dropped down to 23 seconds, so he was purely a depth option shorthanded.
In the playoffs, I thought he was noticeable with his speed and aggression on the forecheck, and he generated some good moments on the cycle with his size. He’s a well-liked teammate and was particularly good against the Lightning in the first round.
The Leafs already have 12 NHL forwards signed, and none of them are going anywhere, at least to start the season. Lorentz joins the competition for the final forward to make the team against a collection of young players (barring another addition), including Easton Cowan, Nikita Grebyonkin, and Fraser Minten. If Nick Robertson eventually signs, it’s hard to picture any of those players making the team out of camp given the salary cap and roster crunch in Toronto, save for maybe Easton Cowan, given Cowan will have to go otherwise return to the OHL, a league he has thoroughly dominated.
Should Lorentz make the team as a fourth-line left winger, how the rest of the line would shake out is worthy of consideration. If it’s to play alongside David Kampf and Ryan Reaves, they run the risk of what happened last season with their fourth line when Noah Gregor was on its left wing — which is to say it was a poor unit that didn’t help the team in any capacity. The line was much better after the Leafs acquired Connor Dewar before the deadline.
If Lorentz were to make the team, it’s unlikely he’d be able to push Dewar out of the lineup altogether, although it’s possible Dewar centers the fourth line and Kampf moves up, or Kampf centers the fourth line and Dewar moves up. Either way, it creates a negative domino effect up the lineup.
If the idea is that Lorentz and Reaves will split games, it’s at least feasible, but it’s not truly plugging a hole of note. It’s just giving them another depth option, but it could make the fourth line a little better if Lorentz plays instead of Reaves. The team’s needs upfront — a top-nine center and potentially a top-nine left winger depending on the Robertson/Cowan/any other surprises, to say nothing of McMann needing to prove himself further — would remain in place.
If nothing else, Lorentz is a veteran NHL body for preseason, which means the Leafs can sit a veteran regular on the team and preserve them for opening night
