The Maple Leafs have acquired Dakota Joshua from the Vancouver Canucks in exchange for a 2028 fourth-round draft pick as they continue to reshape their forward group this summer.
Originally drafted by the Leafs all the way back in 2014, the now-29-year-old Joshua was traded away by Kyle Dubas and took nearly eight seasons since his draft year to prove himself in the league.
In 2023-24, he produced a career season — in a contract year, no less — with 18 goals and 32 points in 63 games. The Leafs were interested in signing Joshua last summer, but the Canucks paid up to keep him from hitting the open market (four years x $3.25 million), so Brad Treliving never got the opportunity to close the deal. It was reported last summer that if Joshua hit the market, he had interest in becoming a Leaf.
Unfortunately for Joshua, later that summer, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer and underwent surgery to remove a tumor. That unfortunate development set the stage for his season ahead. He didn’t play his first game until the middle of November (November 14, to be exact), and he put up just 14 points in 57 games (seven goals) in what was a mess of a season for the Canucks franchise as a whole.
While Joshua’s career year included some reasons to temper the optimism — namely, he shot over 21 percent (!) — he was legitimately good across the board. His size helped create space and drive play, he was on the plus side of scoring chance creation, and he’s a very effective penalty killer. He worked his way up from the fourth line, averaging nearly 14.5 minutes per game, and won his minutes 35-19 at five-on-five. He added four goals and eight points in 13 playoff games when the Canucks advanced to the second round of the 2024 playoffs.
In the following season, Joshua didn’t just come down to earth; he bottomed out.
The Canucks harboured past concerns about Joshua’s physical shape when he reported to camp, and rumours started surfacing a few weeks ago that the franchise had soured on him. You can at least somewhat excuse his performance last season due to off-ice circumstances, but at least for the Canucks, his $3.25 million salary for three more years was untenable. They wanted to clear it off the cap books, knowing it’s a player who has played to a 15-goal, 28-point pace per 82 games over the past three seasons.
For the Leafs, as we’ve written about many times now this summer, they can afford to take the gamble with their cap space. Joshua was a good third liner in his contract year, and he’s a decent bounce-back candidate next season, not only because he should enjoy a normal offseason this summer, but because he posted a 97.4 PDO in 2024-25. Like Maccelli, this is the Leafs‘ second trade involving depth picks for a player with a low PDO who should regress in the right direction. At a minimum, a healthy Joshua should be a double-digit scorer who can penalty kill and fit the Leafs‘ system under Craig Berube.
That makes this a fair gamble for the Leafs. The acquisition cost was minimal, Joshua is a decent bounce-back candidate, and he fits where they want the team to evolve stylistically. The Leafs now have a massive left side of the ice — Matthew Knies, Bobby McMann, Steven Lorentz, and now Joshua, who stands at 6’3 and over 200 pounds. They want to play a heavy, forechecking style of hockey, and it requires big bodies who can actually separate defensemen from the puck in order to establish this identity.
Berube also coached Joshua in St. Louis; there is some familiarity between coach and player. We’ve seen this trend with the Leafs, be it Tanev and OEL (Treliving), Maccelli (Doan), and now Joshua (Berube); they target players with past connections and established relationships.
The Maple Leafs’ lineup/roster picture with Dakota Joshua
While I’d still argue the Leafs need more scoring talent overall, the roster begins to make a lot more sense now, and they can lean on familiarity.
Max Domi has fit well with Auston Matthews whenever they have played together. They can slot Domi on the right wing as a playmaker on a top line alongside Knies. They can keep John Tavares and William Nylander together and pick their power forward forechecker/net front player in McMann — who showed well there last season and scored 20 goals last season — or Joshua.
Whoever “loses” the competition (and realistically, they will all bounce around) can play on a checking/two-way line with Nicolas Roy and Matias Maccelli. That might sound strange at first blush to some, but Maccelli produced his best season alongside Nick Bjugstad and Lawson Crouse, and he would have the chance to essentially play with the exact same style of players — including the handedness — on the Leafs’ third line.
Berube could also move Maccelli into a top-six role and run a huge third line of Joshua-Roy-McMann — a difficult line for opponents to play against, given their length, speed, and skill.
Long story short, there are now several logical options. It also keeps Lorentz and Laughton together, and we’ll see who rounds out that line, be it Calle Jarnkrok, Nick Robertson, or someone else.
It was clear the Leafs needed to add a forward before the season started, and they’ve at least done that now to settle the roster into a logical place. Joshua is a decent bet who helps the Leafs trend to the type of hockey they claim to want to play, and he didn’t cost much to give it a go.
If Joshua doesn’t pan out, though, he has three years remaining and (a reasonable) $3.25 million salary, so there’s at least some risk in rolling the dice. As we can see with David Kampf and Calle Jarnkrok, moving these mid-level salaries isn’t that easy, even in a rising cap world. Joshua needs to be a third-line player at his salary. I think he can do it, but it’s not a slam-dunk bet. He is coming to Toronto with something to prove.
As noted, Joshua is also a really good penalty killer, in part due to his length. They’ve added Roy and Joshua to Laughton, Matthews, Knies, Lorentz, and Jarnkrok (for now) from last season, and for all the talk of needing to replace Marner in the penalty kill, they should be just fine in this department (on paper). That’s without mentioning a full year of Brandon Carlo on defense, to go along with Jake McCabe and Chris Tanev.
The move leaves the Leafs with a shade over $3 million in cap space. Before anyone asks, PuckPedia shows it at just over $2 million, but that’s with an above-the-limit 24-man roster. The Leafs already had too many forwards, and now they’ve added another, so eventually, they will need to move some out. Plus, the Leafs just traded yet another draft pick — albeit a relatively inconsequential one — and they will need to restock some draft capital at some point.
David Kampf seems the most logical odd man out as the Leafs’ other four centers are abundantly clear, and they definitely don’t want to pay Kampf $2.4 million to watch from the press box. Whether it’s possible to move him, though, remains to be seen.
It’s a small step in the right direction if Joshua can rebound, but follow-up moves are still required, and eventually, the Leafs will need to add at the top of their lineup, too.
