The Maple Leafs went 2-0-1 this week, but the storyline to end the week was all about the comments by Anthony Stolarz after the overtime loss to Seattle.
I’ll have more on those developments in a separate article to come, but for now, let’s jump into this week’s Notes, Quotes, Tweets of the Week, and Five Things.
Notes
– In the past two seasons combined, Nick Robertson played a total of four minutes and 37 seconds on the penalty kill. So far this season, he’s played 1:51. It’s not much, but he’s been in the rotation the past few games on a third pairing with Bobby McMann while Scott Laughton recovers from injury and only one of Steven Lorentz/Calle Jarnkrok is in the lineup at a time. Robertson is off to a slow start offensively, with just one assist in six games, and he has been outscored 3-1 at five-on-five. He has a long way to go before he proves anything as a penalty killer either way, but in the bigger picture, they need to get more out of him. If Robertson is going to have much of a future in the league, he needs to add different elements to his game (this is partially the byproduct of not developing properly in the AHL first). He is a decent goal scorer, but not good enough to get by as a one-trick pony.
– So far this season, Brandon Carlo has the highest offensive-zone faceoff percentage of his career at 57 percent. He’s still losing the shot-attempt battle on the ice and is even in goals at 6-6, which falls in line with his expected goals percentage of 50.7. It’s not a good use of a player who has never even hit 20 points in the league and is turning 29 next month. While his regular partner, Morgan Rielly, is off to a hot start with six points in six games – and we can attribute some of it to his comfort level beside a stay-at-home defenseman – the pairing has been out-scored 6-5 so far, even though Rielly is producing well.
– Really striking about Carlo is the complete lack of confidence to attempt passes and move the puck cleanly. Before the Rangers tied the game in the third period, Carlo had time and space with the puck on his stick. Maccelli was providing an outlet, and at the bottom right of the shot, we can see a stick belonging to Morgan Rielly, with nobody around him.
Instead of making a pass – the pass to Rielly is about as easy as it gets, and Rielly clearly wanted the puck, too – Carlo locks into flipping it out. He turns it over, the Rangers shove it down their throat, and they tie the game.
– Early days yet, but Auston Matthews is underwater in expected goals and shot share at five-on-five. He is up 6-2 in goals, but he’s yet to beat a goalie straight up (both his goals against goalies were backdoor tap-ins). Matthews has six points in six games overall – it’s a fine enough production rate – but if he has looked underwhelming, it’s because he has been. He needs to drive play and scoring chances, but he’s not currently doing either through two weeks of the season. Regardless of linemates or whatever else, Matthews should be able to drive play and has throughout his career. Especially when he’s averaging a whopping 21:59 per game so far, which would easily be a career high and is fifth among all NHL forwards so far.
– Probably taking Anthony Stolarz for granted a bit, as he straight-up outdueled Igor Shesterkin, one of the best goalies in the league who is off to an awesome start. There are fair questions about Stolarz’s ability to handle a starter’s workload, but in terms of quality, he is full marks when he is on.
– Last October, the Leafs’ power play clicked at just 8.8% over the entire month. That would make this season’s start (clicking at 14.3 percent), a marked improvement if anything. In other words, it’s far too early to think much of anything about the overall unit, although the Mitch Marner narrative won’t go away. If anything, the power play looks significantly better than this time last season, as they’ve generally been able to set it up, and they’ve missed several high-quality chances (Rielly missed a wide-open net, Matthews has hit the bar, etc). On the concern scale, the power play is still relatively low, even though it’s a tad disappointing that they didn’t hit the ground running considering it’s the same coach and 4/5ths of the same cast.
Quotes
“I have used the analogy of Winnipeg. No team is perfect, but that is a pretty darn good team that won the President’s Trophy. When you look down the middle of the ice, you have Scheifele as the #1. On paper, you have Namestnikov as #2 and Lowry as #3, but again, it all comes down to deployment.
When you look at our roster now, you have Nic Roy, who can take a lot of defensive heavy lifting with defensive-zone starts, defensive faceoffs, and matchups. When you put those into a pot, it allows you to not necessarily get lost on your 1-2-3 but spread out matchups and situational play that could free up different people when we talk about Auston, John, and Scotty Laughton.”
– Brad Treliving on his center group in the offseason
We circulated this quote throughout the summer, as it outlined a plan down the middle of the ice, but the Leafs haven’t exactly followed it. The most common opponents Nic Roy has played against at forward so far at Mason Appleton, Michael Rasmussen, and Jani Nyman. Not exactly top of the lineup players.
Against the Rangers, for example, JT Miller played over eight minutes head to head against Tavares, and just 1:31 against Roy. Zibanejad played roughly 10 minutes against Matthews, and three against Roy.
In the Nashville game, Matthews and ROR played over 10 minutes against each other, Roy saw just 2:40 against ROR. The Predators’ second line was centered by Erik Haula, and the only forward that played less against him than Roy was linemate Calle Jarnkrok.
Did the Leafs just completely overvalue Roy, or is there a disconnect between the plan and what’s happening on the ice? It seems bizarre to me that this was the outlined plan — those are Treliving’s own words — and they essentially haven’t tried it. You can argue Roy hasn’t been very good, but it’s not like he tried and failed.
Treliving also spoke about improved depth at forward, and that’s not happening, either. The Seven regular Leafs forwards averaged at least 14 minutes per game last season. So far this season? Five.
“With the odd-man rushes, we’ve done a good job in some games. In some games, we haven’t. I want to see that get more consistent. Some of the odd-man rushes we’ve given up are self-inflicted.
The other area where we have to get better: our net-front and killing plays low in our own zone. I don’t think we are heavy enough killing plays down low. We’re allowing people to come out of there with the puck.
Our net front can be better and harder. We took real pride in that last year, the net front, and were harder on our net. We have to get harder.”
– Craig Berube on the Leafs‘ defensive play
I agree with what Berube’s assessment of the problems, but they need to start showing some meaningful improvement.
“Overtime, you can’t let someone beat you up the ice there and gets a clear-cut breakaway. A minute left, you want to be on the ice in that situation you gotta work hard. You gotta work back. It cost us a point there.”
– Anthony Stolarz after the loss to overtime
It is pretty wild that the Leafs’ head coach and their number-one goalie have both called out William Nylander in the span of about a week. Ironically, Nylander is third in the league in points, but some of it is the result of empty-net freebies, and it’s clear he’s capable of a lot more. It seems everyone around the Leafs organization is aware.
Tweets of the Week
The Leafs have never finished in the top half of the league in power play opportunities in the Matthews era.
It's early, but if you were wondering if things would be different this year, so far the answer is a firm no. pic.twitter.com/3bVyNT0Nio
— Kevin Papetti (@KPapetti) October 15, 2025
It’s hard to talk about this without sounding like a whiny conspiracy theorist of sorts, but I would wager the statistical likelihood of a team being this bad at drawing penalties despite making the playoffs for nine years running — and it’s a team that is regularly among the elite in terms of offense — is essentially slim to none. We’ve seen it with suspensions in Toronto compared to elsewhere in the league, including the way they’re covered in the media. Year in and year out, it seems to be the case with penalty calls, too.
According to early data, Leafs offence:
Top-10 in slot passes & shots & inner slot shots. 2nd most rush chances in NHL.
Butttt poor zone time, worst cycle chances, 3rd-worst in rebound chances.
Feels like w/ their size those could flip (less rushes & better cycle play?) w/ time.— Justin Bourne (@jtbourne) October 16, 2025
There’s a lot that we could discuss with this data, but a few things immediately stand out.
The Leafs can still clearly generate high-danger chances. That’s not really an issue, and they are fifth in the league in goals per game right now.
The other big takeaway is that it’s not really the team Berube and Treliving say they want to build. They don’t forecheck or cycle particularly well, so they don’t play heavy down low. On defense, they are bleeding odd-man rush chances against — again, the antithesis of how they want to play.
This isn’t a nightmare start by any means — they have a positive goal differential and a winning record — and I can’t say any of the teams below them in the East are particularly concerning, other than Florida for obvious reasons. But it’s stunningly disjointed and not exactly in line with that they’ve sold us as their plan.
Leafs were dead last last season with just 21 goals from defence. With three already this year, they're second in the NHL and on pace for more than 3x that.
Obviously early, but that's one way they'll need to generate more offence with their new lineup.
— James Mirtle (@mirtle) October 14, 2025
This has been a big positive so far: legitimate offense from the defense. Half the group has scored already, and they are getting what feels like nightly contributions from the defense right now. The sustainability remains to be seen, but this has been a promising start.
Five Things I Think I’d Do
1. I think week two of Easton Cowan was more of a mixed bag. He was effectively benched for the final 13 minutes against the New York Rangers, and he was moved off the top line against Seattle but still managed to play 12:48 overall.
As you would expect with any young player, he’s struggling on the wall defensively, and it’s exacerbated at times because he’s on his off-wing, where it is naturally harder to break out. Against Seattle, there were also some giveaways where had the puck on his stick in offensive situations, either through the neutral zone or in the offensive zone. When playing with Matthews and Knies, their linemate needs to make plays and keep possession rolling.
It’s only Cowan’s fourth game — and it wasn’t so poor that he needs to come out of the lineup just yet — but it’s week-to-week monitoring right now, and the adrenaline is starting to wear off.
2. I think Dakota Joshua is getting too much leash right now. I get that he’s new, they paid a price to acquire him, and he has term on his deal, but the grace period can only last so long here. Calle Jarnkrok has three goals in four games and was healthy scratched. Steven Lorentz recorded a two-point night and then played one shift the next game, got hurt, and returned to a scratch. Other than on the penalty kill, Joshua hasn’t been enough of a factor, especially when the players sitting are also good penalty killers.
If they really want to keep Joshua in the lineup, I’d actually move him up and see if he sinks or swims. There were some good sequences from him against Seattle, including a good shift alongside Tavares and Nylander. It’s hard to challenge a player to provide more in a depth role; it requires ice time and more than only taking defensive-zone draws. I’d either move Joshua up and challenge him directly, or I’d sit him altogether as a wakeup call. This in-between stuff isn’t doing much good.
3. I think I’d like to see a line of McMann-Roy-Maccelli. They aren’t using Roy as a checking center anyway right now, so they might as well give him some linemates who can make plays, and McMann and Maccelli make sense as a stylistic fit; one is a natural shooter, and the other is a passer. Roy gives them stability down the middle with some skill. It’s a line you can generally feel good about.
That would leave a line of Lorentz-Domi-Robertson/Jarnkrok. Lorentz and Robertson actually worked pretty well together last season; Lorentz forechecks and knows his role, and Robertson shoots.
4. I think I would keep rolling the defense pairings the Leafs ended the Seattle game with, as they flipped Chris Tanev and Brandon Carlo. This is something I wrote about last week, and I think it makes more stylistic sense: Tanev can move the puck better with Rielly to facilitate, and Carlo can defend while McCabe drives the pairing.
5. Regardless of the line combinations, I think the Leafs need to work on creating and sustaining more zone time. Part of it is simply shooting more and crashing the net.
If we look at the start of the Seattle game, all four lines got into the game right away, and all four got in on the forecheck and possessed the puck in the offensive zone at some point on their first shift. The Leafs had zero shots to show for it, and their first shot on net in the game came roughly nine minutes in, after they went down 1-0.
The Leafs are 13th in shots on net per game, so it’s not as if they don’t shoot or create; they are among the best in creating high-danger chances and goals. But it’s a lot of one and done, and they pass on shots regularly. Part of grinding pucks in the offensive zone is shooting with volume and working to get it back. Too often, nobody is in front of the net, and they don’t win pucks back.
The middle six lines of Maccelli-Tavares-Nylander and McMann-Domi-Robertson feature zero players who crash the crease. They all pull high and look to shoot or make plays. There are good things to draw upon offensively — the team can score goals — but they have to grind in the offensive zone, too.
Last but not least, Go Jays!
