A day after the Maple Leafs traded Matthew Knies for Kirill Marchenko, the sting of losing a likable, talented, and unique player who loved Toronto is still real. But as a new season begins, so is the excitement of watching a Leafs team that may have just raised its ceiling.

Scattered thoughts, in note form:

  • Some will bring up the assets the Maple Leafs added to the trade and the money they took back, but for me, the biggest sting is that Knies has been such a big champion of “Toronto is the best” throughout it all. He’s now been done pretty dirty—dragged through the rumour mill for a year and traded to Columbus on the eve of the new season. This is hard to read, given the ambassador Knies was for the market:

  • That said, nothing sells players on Toronto like the Leafs winning games in this market—certainly the best place to win and, naturally, a difficult place to lose—and Marchenko is a solid bet to help them do it more than Knies can. That’s what ultimately matters, and it’s how John Chayka has to conduct his business.
  • The combination of Russia not participating in the big international events and Marchenko playing in Columbus has certainly contributed to some in Toronto not fully recognizing that he has established himself as a legitimate top-line stud who can drive a line off the wing. Knies was a valuable, unique complementary winger, but he simply isn’t as fast and dynamic off the rush and can’t tilt the ice by carrying the puck through three zones the way Marchenko can. Knies has been a high-end complementary winger; Marchenko has shown the game-breaking star qualities.
  • The power-forward conversation is a weird one because it wholly depends on how you define a power forward. If you define one as a player who is big but also has significant skill—which is how most people seem to think about it, as far as I can tell—then Knies was one, but so is Marchenko, certainly. As Knies himself learned once against Columbus, Marchenko is a big man who is hard to move and can absolutely fly. If a power forward requires physical intimidation, board-rattling hits, and glove-dropping, Knies is closer to that than Marchenko, but I’m really not sure Knies met that definition in Toronto. There seems to be some talk about how the Leafs will stand any chance of standing up to the Floridas and Bostons of the league now that they’ve taken away one of their bigger bodies and hit leaders, but Knies has been around the last three years as the team was routinely (and often fairly) criticized for its softness and lack of physical response in key moments. He’s not exactly shifted that tone.
  • My initial reaction when I saw the full picture of the trade: slight overpay. When you consider Marchenko wanted out, Knies’ long-term value contract, and the fact that Knies couldn’t block a trade to Columbus as many good players can, I was a little surprised the Leafs had to top up the offer as much as they did. They clearly believe the gap is sizable in terms of Marchenko being a legitimate top-line core-level driver, and they really didn’t want to lose him to Boston or Montreal. I can get there on juicing the offer a little more with that in mind.

  • It’s true that Knies, in a package with, say, a defense prospect like Ben Danford (just as an example) plus other pieces, might have been one path to finding a similarly aged or prime-aged impact center or defenseman via trade. But those trades are extremely difficult to find and probably exist more in our own heads than in the boardroom conversations of real NHL GMs. No one eagerly lines up to trade high-end centers or defensemen for wingers, no matter how big and skilled the winger is.
  • I also think it’s important to frame the downside risk properly. In the more pessimistic scenario, Marchenko gets paid, stagnates from here, and isn’t anything more than the 70-ish point player he’s already proven himself to be. Knies, two years younger, takes a step in the next couple of years, closing the gap between the players while making $4.75 million less. You’ve still got a 6-foot-3 winger in his mid-to-late 20s who produces just below a point per game and likely, based on everything we know today, has strong five-on-five impacts. Of course, it wouldn’t be great at all if Knies closed the gap in value while making significantly less, while knowing the Leafs also gave up those two assets (Emil Andrae and a second-round pick). But it’s also hard to picture it setting the organization back in a serious way unless something truly unforeseen happens.
  • The upside potential, on the other hand: Marchenko continues to prove he is a tier higher than Knies—which he has done through their respective careers to date, to be clear—continues to dominate his five-on-five minutes, and has his best offensive seasons yet on a team with Auston Matthews, Gavin McKenna, William Nylander, John Tavares, and Darren Raddysh to work with. I think it’s a pretty sound bet to make based on what we know today.
  • If the Leafs are at all serious about trying to win a Cup with Matthews still here, they needed to raise their ceiling. Even in the better-case scenarios this season—the McKenna wildcard, the Bobrovsky bet, the Raddysh bet, Tanev’s health, and Matthews bouncing back, mostly all working out—it was hard to get all the way to true contender status. Too much had to go right, and they were too reliant on Matthews and Nylander to drive all the results at five-on-five. I won’t sit here and declare they’re fully “there” now, but they needed another proven game-changer/needle-mover.

Ten dimes don’t equal a dollar… As we build our roster, getting elite talent that can change outcomes is expensive. We’re willing to pay for that.

– John Chayka

  • This morning, I thought back to the darkness we all felt as the 2025-26 Leafs, in the shadow of the Marner drama, spiraled down the standings, playing a miserable brand of hockey without a high probability of even keeping their own first-round draft pick, which was likely to transfer to the Bruins while we watched Brandon Carlo treat every puck on his stick like it had a lit fuse (all capped by Matthews getting his knee obliterated by Gudas, with no immediate response from his teammates, adding a rotten cherry on top of the shit sundae). I fast-forward to today, the first day of the new 2026-27 season just a handful of months later, with Gavin McKenna, Darren Raddysh, Sergei Bobrovsky, and Kirill Marchenko now part of a Leafs team that only really lost Matthew Knies (and I suppose Bobby McMann at the last deadline) among its notable departures. Hope always springs eternal to some degree in Toronto, and the dollars will always flow into the MLSE coffers, but the Leafs were genuinely at a point with this core where they needed to give the fan base something to believe in again. The amount of tuning out and sense of general despair was nearing a breaking point in the Matthews era. A Treliving-style 2025 offseason in which they simply shuffled the deck chairs in the supporting cast of the roster would’ve been incredibly uninspiring. They needed this kind of offseason in which there was genuine, wholesale change outside of Matthews, Tavares, and Nylander. So happy opening day, everyone. Who knows where it goes from here, but I’m glad we don’t have to sit here today and disingenuously reach for sources of hope and excitement in our writing.

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