We are almost through the second round of the NHL playoffs, the Maple Leafs have a new GM in place, and against all odds, Toronto won the draft lottery.
As always, there’s a lot happening in Leafland, even though the team hasn’t played a game in a month. Let’s jump into some long-weekend thoughts on a handful of topics concerning the Leafs and the league at large.
A note on trading down from first overall
Given the genuine debate over who will go first overall in the 2026 NHL Draft, there is an argument that the Maple Leafs should accumulate assets and draft a defenseman now, since it is a need.
The thing is… the reason the Leafs might consider trading down is the same reason other teams likely won’t pay a king’s ransom to move up. There’s no logic to this idea: “Well, it’s not a generational player, so just trade down with a team who will pay a big price to move up… to also not draft a generational player.” That is, unless there’s a situation the team can take advantage of, i.e., something like Vancouver craving the west coast Gavin McKenna.
Tack on that teams are generally risk-averse in the NHL, too. It sucks for the fans, but the reality is that NHL clubs don’t often make big, bold trades and instead opt for iterative, patient team building as much as possible.
We would have to go back to 2003 to find the last first-overall pick traded. When the Panthers owned the first overall in ’03, the consensus selection at the time was Marc-Andre Fleury, but Florida already had Roberto Luongo on the roster. The Panthers traded down two spots, received Mikael Samuelsson plus a second-round pick in the 2003 draft (Stefan Meyer) for their troubles, and drafted Nathan Horton. The Penguins received first overall (Fleury) and a third-round pick in the 2003 draft (Daniel Carcillo).
It was not exactly a haul for Florida, and it didn’t really benefit the Panthers whatsoever, as Horton played his best hockey elsewhere in the league. Marc-Andre Fleury eventually played elsewhere, too, but before he did, he won three Cups and was a franchise cornerstone in Pittsburgh, where they should probably retire his jersey.
The year before, Florida also traded out of the first overall pick, exchanging first for third in the Rick Nash draft (Florida selected Jay Bouwmeester). All Florida got for it was Columbus dealing them the right to swap first-round picks the following season (which obviously didn’t matter in the end, because Florida owned the #1 pick again).
Needless to say, those trades were not heists, and there is not much reason to believe that any of the teams in the mix at the top of the draft this year would pay a king’s ransom to move up to the top spot, save for maybe the Vancouver angle.
The Leafs would be far better off spending their time getting the pick right than shopping it around for a limited return. If someone genuinely wants it, they can knock the door down and take a swing, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Draft Philosophy & The First Overall Pick
It’s incredible that the debate over drafting best overall player vs. fit or position is even a debate at all anymore, but it still seems to come up all the time. Always draft the best player available, knowing the NHL draft is more of a three-to-five-plus-year projection than an instantly gratifying one. In the NFL or NBA, a team probably should draft for fit at key times, knowing those players are stepping right into the league.
In 2018, when then-Coyotes GM John Chayka somewhat surprisingly selected Barrett Hayton fifth overall, he said at the time: “Being that playmaking center through the middle of the ice that is a dedicated 200-foot guy… those centermen that are like that are impossible to acquire.”
While Chayka, in a vacuum, is correct about those types of centers, the Hayton pick received a lot of scrutiny at the time, and it hasn’t exactly panned out. In retrospect, the pick should have been Quinn Hughes, but in fairness, Hughes should have gone either first or second overall alongside Rasmus Dahlin. Filip Zadina was the “surprise” faller in that draft, and Chayka resisted the temptation to take the talented winger at the time; he was proven right on this count, as Zadina isn’t even in the league anymore.
There are probably some lessons learned there for Chayka, especially given that the Hayton selection was the highest pick he ever made.
For the current Leafs team, we can’t stress enough how bad they were last season across the board. Of course, it would be ideal to draft a pillar 1C or 1D at first overall. But the draft doesn’t always shake out that way. All things being equal, every single team would want a right-shot center over a left-shot winger, but nobody would take Shane Wright over Juraj Slafkovsky right now.
In the end, it will come down to the Leafs evaluating their options. If they think Gavin McKenna has Patrick Kane/Nikita Kucherov-like skill and upside — just to frame it with one example — McKenna should probably be the pick. Kane himself went first overall, and both players are first-ballot Hall of Famers who have each won multiple Stanley Cups. If they think McKenna’s defensive game and work ethic concerns are legitimate, like Matvei Michkov is battling right now, they should probably dig deeper into the other options available.
The Leafs have to find the best player with the greatest chance of becoming a future cornerstone of this franchise. That’s really what it comes down to, position be damned.
Toronto Marlies’ Playoff Run
A quietly positive development for the Leafs of late has been the Toronto Marlies winning the play-in round, the first round, and the first game of the second round against Cleveland. Some of their young players experiencing a playoff run is positive for their development, if for no other reason than the deeper they go, the more games they play.
Easton Cowan played 66 games this season and experienced a few long stretches of limited ice time, not to mention sitting out nearly all of February. More reps at this point are positive, including opportunities as a mainstay on the Marlies‘ top power-play unit.
Jacob Quillan actually played fewer games across both leagues this season than Cowan did, due to how the organization managed him. Now, he’s a top-six regular the Marlies lean on.
Artur Akhtyamov is pushing toward 50 starts as he has seemingly taken over the net for the time being.
You get the point; (some) prospects are receiving notable ice time, and it all helps.
But even if the Marlies go all the way, a word of caution is probably in order. The team has a bunch of veterans at the top of their lineup: Logan Shaw, Vinni Lettieri, Alex Nylander, Dakota Mermis, Matt Benning, to name a few. A collection of young players isn’t driving their run. There are some young players in the mix, and the Leafs are hoping they learn along the way.
Last season’s Calder Cup winners, the Abbotsford Canucks, graduated two players to their NHL team this season in Linus Karlsson, who scored 15 goals, and Max Sasson, who scored 13. Both earned two-year, full-time NHL contract extensions. Arturs Silovs fetched the Canucks a fourth-round pick and played 39 games for Pittsburgh, but he wasn’t particularly effective. The rest of the team hasn’t amounted to much to this point.
We can also find examples of successful young teams, such as Tampa Bay, who won with Tyler Johnson, Alex Killorn, Ondrej Palat, Radko Gudas, and Richard Panik, among other AHL grads.
This Marlies squad probably shades more towards last year’s Canucks team than the great Tampa Bay farm club, but there is reason to believe there’s a bit more juice to squeeze.
We already know Easton Cowan will be a Leaf next season (it is not even in question). Jacob Quillan’s call-up appearances were a mixed bag, but he’s a center with speed; he’ll get a chance to make the team next Fall. Bo Groulx took a step in his career this season and acquitted himself well with the Leafs, putting himself in the mix. Luke Haymes didn’t look completely out of place in the NHL, either, and has five points in nine playoff games so far.
After finally receiving a look in the NHL — where he fared completely fine, given the circumstances — William Villeneuve is clicking at a point-per-game in the postseason so far, leading all AHL defensemen in playoff scoring. He’s a right shot with some skill and vision. He is also a pending RFA, so he’s positioning himself well to give himself a contractual edge as he tries to make the big club next season.
Ben Danford has now joined the playoff run for a little taste of pro hockey to prepare him for next season. His first game included some ups and downs (he was fortunate that Cleveland didn’t tie the game after he was beaten cleanly, leading to a 2v1), but his skating and general hockey sense were already evident. He just has to learn the game at this level.
The Leafs dressed too many bad players last season. Calle Jarnkrok played 56 games, Philippe Myers played 39, and Simon Benoit played 73. Steven Lorentz went long stretches without contributing, but he played 71 games. Overall, there weren’t enough quality depth options raising the floor of the team, hungrily pushing their way into the lineup.
At best, the Leafs are looking at small-margin wins, save for Cowan, but the Leafs were one of the worst teams in the league by the end of the season. Every improvement helps.
A note on the Matthew Knies trade speculation
Matthew Knies’ name has made the rounds in the rumour mill since the Leafs entertained trade calls for him at the deadline under the previous management regime. There is some logic to it, given he doesn’t play a premium position and the Leafs have sizable holes at center and on defense. If moving Knies could help fill those more important needs, the organization has to explore it, without question.
But the conversation has probably gone a bit too far overall.
While winger is not a premium position, Knies is a premium player, given his physical traits. It is incredibly difficult to find players with Knies’ combination of size and skill, as John Chayka explained recently:
“Knies is a really unique player. I think his blend of size, skating, and skill is really, really hard to find. I’m not aware of what happened at the deadline or what previous regimes thought. I think Mats and I are going to go through and evaluate the roster and make some decisions.
“Ultimately, if you’re making a decision, you’re trying to get better. I think you’d be really hard-pressed to do better than Matthew Knies.”
Granted, Chayka won’t come out and declare he’s open for business on a player who is young and locked in like Knies. Chayka was also complimentary of Craig Berube before he fired him, so we shouldn’t entirely take his statements at face value in general, but he’s not wrong here. This is a unique player at a great age.
Knies’ production actually increased last season despite losing an elite linemate. His goals were down from 29 to 23, as his shooting percentage dropped to a still-high-but-reasonable 16.4 percent from 19.1 percent, but he jumped from 58 points in 78 games overall to 66 in 79. It’s a respectable increase on a Leafs team that was a mess for more than half the season.
A big question now is whether Knies can develop into the team’s physical leader. It is something we discussed in this space last summer, but there were no real signs of growth in this part of his game. He can’t be on the ice for incidents like this one and do nothing about it:
This was the team’s best young prospect receiving a cheap shot from a player listed about half a foot and 50 pounds less than Knies, who was on the ice when it happened, and there was no response. It simply can’t happen.
Knies has had no issue standing up for himself when challenged directly — and it rarely happens as a result — but it hasn’t exactly translated to standing up for his teammates, which he is more than physically capable of doing. This isn’t to suggest Knies should become an enforcer or a bodyguard, but there’s a line between doing nothing and becoming a goon that is appropriate for him.
In a perfect world, given that the Leafs own the first-overall pick this draft, I’d ideally pair the two together. Knies is the only skilled player on the team capable of addressing anyone who takes liberties with the 18-year-old the team is about to select. Easton Cowan will do it — as we saw down the stretch — but they shouldn’t lean on the 21-year-old for protection of the 18-year-old, as admirable as Cowan’s feistiness is. It doesn’t mean liberties won’t be taken at all—look at the Matthew Schaefer incidents last season—but they need to be addressed correctly, unlike many incidents in Toronto over the past several years.
Long story short, you could hardly blame the Leafs for wanting to explore a potential Knies trade, but they should tread lightly. The organization has no one else even remotely close to Knies’ profile, and, in fact, most teams in the league don’t. He’s a really good player who’s only turning 24 this fall, and he’s signed for five years at a great cap hit.
The youth and speed theme of the 2026 NHL playoffs
A common theme I’ve often heard about this year’s playoffs is the takeover of youth and speed, be it the Habs, Sabres, Ducks, Flyers, or even some first-round fodder like Utah. There are some impressive young cores forming, and I don’t want to take anything away from those teams. I wonder, though, if this season will be more of an anomaly than anything else.
In the first season in 16 years in which the NHL sent players to the Olympics, there were some strange outlier developments. Three of the four teams that made the second round in the Eastern Conference last year didn’t even make the playoffs this season. That in and of itself is strange, but there’s also this:
Since 2007-08, no team in the league has shot over 11 percent at five-on-five, but this season, three teams did.
The Habs, in particular, posted the highest five-on-five shooting percentage of any team in the post-lockout era, according to Natural Stat Trick.
One notable outlier — the Habs, in this case — is eyebrow-raising enough. But three? In 2025-26, there were four teams with a higher five-on-five shooting percentage than the 48-game-season Leafs team, who shot the lights out and led the NHL in shooting percentage by nearly a full percentage point in 2012-13. That came in a significantly shortened season ripe for outliers.
Maybe this is just where the NHL is headed, and it’s the start of the always-improving talent around the league shooting the lights out, but history generally tells us that coaches will figure out how to stifle offense.
The condensed schedule, in particular, was not kind to older teams. There were long stretches when teams were playing every other night, or some sort of five-game-in-eight-nights stretch. Naturally, this type of scheduling favours the younger, fresher, healthier legs.
The NHL playoffs, in general, have always favoured older, more experienced teams. Last season, seven of the eight clubs that advanced past the first round were among the top 10 oldest teams in the league by average. This season, only Minnesota and Colorado advanced to the second round.
To be frank, through two rounds of the playoffs, I’d say we’ve only seen two or three high-quality series so far: Montreal vs. Tampa Bay, Minnesota vs. Dallas, and probably Colorado vs. Minnesota, although the latter series was brief. The rest has largely been mediocre hockey and/or competitively lopsided, in my view.
When then-Leafs GM Brad Treliving defended his team’s sports science department amid a flurry of injuries this past season, he noted the following stat:
“If you look at the numbers — as we do every single day — from October 1st to January 28 from last year to this year, league-wide, it is almost exactly 100 more players who have been placed on Injured Reserve. I think it is more the result of a condensed schedule and more games being played in a shorter period of time.”
A lot of injuries, a lot of sky-high percentages, and a lot of youth seizing the day. We will see how repeatable it all is. Some of it is the natural cycle of the league, as young teams will inevitably take steps forward over time. But I wonder if some of this was exacerbated by the compacted schedule. Will we see some proverbial order restored with a regular schedule next season?
Personally, I’d be very careful about making sweeping generalizations about which teams are good — and which are over the hill — moving forward, based on this past season’s results.
