Anthony Stolarz’s 2025-26 season was strange, injury-disrupted, and ultimately forgettable — a fitting description of the Maple Leafs’ season as a whole.
After leading the NHL with a .926 save percentage in 2024-25, Stolarz finished last season at .893 with a 3.28 goals-against average and a 10-10-3 record in 26 appearances. It was the lowest save percentage of his NHL career.
There were mitigating circumstances, of course. The Leafs were a defensive disaster for significant stretches, and Stolarz battled through a major injury interruption to his season. Given his career .914 save percentage and the level he reached in each of the previous two years — .925 in Florida and .926 in his first season in Toronto — it is probably safe to treat last season’s .893 as an anomaly rather than a new baseline.
Still, the season reinforced the biggest question mark: Can he stay healthy enough to be counted on for any kind of significant workload?
Stolarz’s odd and injury-interrupted 2025-26 season
Stolarz’s season started well enough. With Joseph Woll away from the team on a personal leave, the Leafs leaned heavily on Stolarz early, starting him six times in their first seven games.
Through his first five appearances, he was arguably the Leafs’ best player. He was battling through traffic, absorbing a concerning amount of contact around the crease, and giving the team a chance to win games despite some disjointed play in front of him.
Frustration boiled over after an overtime loss to Seattle in October:
“Maybe we can take a page out of their book and start getting to the net. For us, we like to go low-to-high and shoot, but for their goalie, it is like playing catch in the yard. He is seeing everything, and we are not making it difficult.
“… In OT, you can’t let someone beat you up the ice there. It is a clear-cut breakaway with a minute left. You want to be on the ice in that situation, you have to work hard. You have to work back. It cost us a point there.”
The overtime comment was clearly directed at William Nylander, and Stolarz walked it back two days later, saying he had spoken privately with Nylander:
“I pulled Willy aside, and we had a conversation. He is someone I admire and respect deeply… We are a family in here. We are looking to push each other and get to our ultimate goal at the end of the day.
“… I get paid to stop the puck, too. At the end of the day, it is on me as well.”
It’s quite possible Stolarz was pressing a little bit. Woll’s absence rolled out the red carpet for him to seize the crease and run with it. He had just signed the first contract of real significance and security in his NHL career — four years at $3.75 million annually — following a season in which he led the league in save percentage. For the first time, there were real expectations that he might grow into something more than a backup or a tandem goalie.
His play dipped following the Seattle comments, but he recovered to win four consecutive starts from late October into early November. He owned a winning 6-4-1 record through 11 appearances, even if his .895 save percentage reflected a mix of strong performances, shaky moments, and a messy team in front of him.
The bottom then fell out during a home-and-home set against Boston. Stolarz allowed four goals on 19 shots before he was pulled in the first game, marking his first performance-related hook as a Leaf. Three nights later, he allowed three goals on 11 shots in the opening period before Dennis Hildeby replaced him. Officially, the second exit was due to an upper-body injury, although there was a reasonable case to make the change on performance alone.
What the Leafs initially portrayed as a relatively minor issue turned into a 73-day absence. Stolarz later revealed that he was dealing with a nerve problem that simply needed time to settle down.
Stolarz did not return until January 23 against Vegas, nearly two and a half months after leaving the second Boston game. Unsurprisingly, he looked rusty, allowing nine goals in two consecutive losses to Vegas and Seattle. He was briefly assigned to the Marlies on a conditioning loan, but only to participate in practices; despite going 73 days without playing a game, he never actually started one in the AHL. Instead, he was thrown directly into NHL action against a Pacific Division-leading Vegas team that had recently won seven straight games, including a 6-5 victory over the Leafs eight days earlier.
When Craig Berube was asked whether the Leafs considered giving Stolarz a game in the minors to help him get up to speed, his answer was curt: “That’s not my call.” It was a strange response from the former head coach, effectively leaving it at the feet of Brad Treliving while acknowledging that Stolarz still needed to get going and the team’s condensed schedule offered little practice time.
It was another head-scratching moment from an organization that simply wasn’t well run in 2025-26. The Leafs had a perfectly sensible mechanism available to ease an injury-prone goalie back into action after a two-and-a-half-month absence, but they used the conditioning assignment for practice reps only and then tossed him into a difficult NHL start.
Stolarz’s next start, the final game before the Olympic break in Edmonton, offered the first sign that he was finally beginning to find his footing. After the break, the results remained uneven behind a spiraling team, but his game started to look more recognizable in March. He made 36 saves in a win over Minnesota, stopped 44 in a shootout loss to New Jersey, and exorcised some of his earlier-season demons in a nice victory over Boston.
Even then, there was another bizarre injury scare in late March when a wayward Nylander shot caught him up high during warmups in Ottawa, sending him to the hospital for precautionary reasons. He returned quickly this time, but it was one final strange episode in Stolarz’s 2025-26 season from hell.
It is easy to look at Stolarz and imagine something more. He is 6’6, athletic for his size, and technically sound. When he is healthy and dialed in, he can look like a legitimate high-end NHL starter. From 2020-21 through 2024-25, he recorded a .921 save percentage across five seasons and three different organizations.
Stolarz is a massive man who plays the position at a heavy weight, and it’s a question mark whether his body would ever allow him to carry a starter’s load. His 34 appearances in 2024-25 remain the only time he’s surpassed the 30-start mark, and even that season included an absence of nearly two months, followed by a head injury that ended his playoffs after Game 1 of the second round.
At 32, it is difficult to confidently project him as anything more than a roughly 30-game goaltender, even if his talent occasionally flatters to deceive that there is a true number one hiding in there (which is fine for the price tag).
The Leafs shouldn’t need to test the “can he be more than that?” theory anymore.
Can Bobrovsky help Stolarz reset?
Clearly, the addition of Sergei Bobrovsky fundamentally changes the Leafs’ goaltending situation. Rather than entering the season with Stolarz as half of a talented but unreliable tandem alongside Woll, Stolarz can settle into a role alongside one of the league’s most dependable horses.
Bobrovsky is coming off an ugly statistical season of his own, posting an .877 save percentage, but his availability has rarely been in question. He has been a 50-plus-game goalie throughout most of his career and has continued to handle significant regular-season and playoff workloads into his late 30s.
The Woll-Stolarz tandem was plenty talented, but it could also destabilize the entire team when one injury followed another. The Leafs were constantly cycling through goalies, adjusting workloads, and asking one injury-prone netminder to cover for the other. Even when the results were good, we were always kind of waiting for the next shoe to drop.
Bobrovsky also arrives with a pre-existing relationship with Stolarz from their season together in Florida. Paul Maurice has spoken glowingly about Stolarz’s time with the Panthers and, specifically, his relationship with Bobrovsky:
I know that Sergei loved him as a partner. He told me that directly. We loved him here in the room.
We would’ve loved to have kept him… We loved the guy. He was good for us.
Bobrovsky brings more than a decorated résumé; he brings an approach to preparation and physical fitness that has enabled him to remain a heavy-use goalie at an age when most are rapidly declining or already retired. New Leafs VP of Sport Performance Andy O’Brien recently described Bobrovsky’s “biological age” as younger than his chronological one because of how meticulously he takes care of himself:
He is young because he takes such good care of himself. He doesn’t have the same wear and tear as a goalie who is 37-38 years old.
It would be overly simplistic to suggest Stolarz can solve his injury history by copying Bobrovsky’s training routine. Some bodies simply hold up better than others, and Stolarz’s issues have ranged from knee surgery to a head injury to last season’s nerve problem. There is probably no magic off-ice program that suddenly makes him highly durable at age 32.
But Bobrovsky’s habits, preparation, and day-to-day presence can hopefully help — not just Stolarz, but Artur Akhtyamov and the organization’s other young goalies as well.
For Stolarz, the role should now be clear. The Leafs do not need him to prove he can start 50+ games. In an 84-game season, 30-35 starts should really be the expectation. If he returns to his career level and stays available — and given that Bobrovsky has some question marks of his own coming off last season — the tandem could become genuinely competitive rather than a conventional starter-backup arrangement like in Florida.
After an odd year in which Stolarz struggled, got hurt, called out the team, walked it back, missed nearly two and a half months, and never fully established a rhythm, a quieter season would suit everyone just fine. Better health, improved defensive structure, and Bobrovsky’s stabilizing presence could give Stolarz a clean opportunity to reset. The talent remains obvious. The question, as always, is how often the Leafs will actually be able to put it in the crease.
