Everything is new in Toronto, except the problem

For most of a decade the Maple Leafs were a playoff fixture with a spring problem. Last season they did not get that far. Toronto finished 28th with 78 points, the general manager was fired in March, the coach in May, and by the end of June the club had a new front office, a new bench boss and the first overall pick.

The standings arc is stark: 115 points, then 111, 102, 108 and finally 78. So the bettor's first question is the usual one, turned upside down. Was last season an unlucky outlier that the market is right to forgive?

Our answer is no. If anything, Toronto was fortunate to get to 78. Its shooters bailed out a team that was out-chanced almost every night. The summer brought real upgrades, but the thing that sank the Leafs is the thing that changed least.

That makes us far cooler than the crowd. The Athletic's projection model has Toronto around 93 points, as cited by Sportsnet. The sportsbooks sit in the mid-90s, Daily Faceoff sees a bubble team that falls just short, and four of 14 NHL.com staffers slip the Leafs in as the last wild card. We are around 85. Everyone agrees the defense is the problem. We part ways on how much of last season was bad luck, and on who should be in goal.

1What last season really was

Toronto's results were bad. Its underlying play was worse.

The one strength is real. Toronto has finished above its expected goals in four of the last five seasons (+17.2, -9.0, +6.6, +5.9, +13.6). That is shooting talent, not luck, and it carries over.

The collapse was not about the net. Toronto took 45 points from its first 41 games and 33 from its last 41, while its goaltending actually improved from 12.8 goals below expected to 3.3 above. The team simply stopped winning the ice.

2How the model builds Toronto's ranking

Our preseason rating starts from how well a team actually played last season, with luck stripped out, and then adds only what has historically carried over from one season to the next.

The starting point is near the bottom. Measured on chances rather than results, Toronto was one of the three or four weakest teams in the league last season, a notch below its standings finish.

The roster moves are a big step up. Few teams added as much lineup quality this summer: a power-play quarterback, a No. 1 pick, three veteran depth centers and a healthy Chris Tanev, who played 11 games last season after core surgery. This is the largest push upward in the rating.

The finishing is real. Five years of beating expected goals earns a modest bonus.

Age and the crease pull the other way. Toronto is one of the older lineups in the league, with Tavares and Tanev at 36 and Ekman-Larsson at 35, and older teams tend to decline. The goalie change is a clear minus in our numbers (section 5).

Summer moves: in and out

Net: a clearly deeper and more experienced lineup with a real power-play quarterback, paid for with the most important position on the ice. On paper, the skaters are better. In goal, our numbers say Toronto got older and worse.

The coach is a small plus. Jim Hiller replaces Craig Berube. New coaches get only modest credit in our model, because most of a coach's measured effect does not travel with him.

The result is a D+ team, 24th in the league, projected for about 85 points. That puts Toronto closer to the Islanders and St. Louis than to the playoff line, and well below where the sportsbooks have it. Books usually beat preseason models on season totals, so we hold that view loosely. It will take a month of fewer chances against to change it.

Our projected opening-night lineup. Each player shows his 2026-27 grade (A to E, with a 0-100 score: his percentile among NHL regulars at his position), his role and last season's numbers. Goalies are graded the same way against the league's 64 starters and backups.

Reading the lineup

The stars are still stars. Matthews grades A+ (94) even after an injury-shortened 27-goal season, and Nylander put up 79 points in 65 games. Tavares scored 31 at 35 and still grades B+. After two injury-hit seasons, Daily Faceoff ranks Matthews only 10th among Rocket Richard candidates. We are less worried: 27 goals in 60 games is still a 37-goal pace over 82 games, and he grades A+ with room to spare. The top six is the reason Toronto will win games it has no business winning.

McKenna is the swing piece. The first overall pick starts on Tavares's wing. Daily Faceoff projects about 60 points, a rookie year like Ivan Demidov's in Montreal. That is plausible, but he carries the widest range on the roster, and rookies rarely drive team results in year one. A quick adjustment would give Toronto a genuine second scoring line for the first time in a while.

The depth has an identity now. Paul, Sissons, Blueger, Duhaime and camp winner Zack MacEwen make a heavy, defensive bottom six, with Dakota Joshua easing back from a core injury. It will not score much, but it should stop the bleeding that came from the depth lines last season. Previews worry about chemistry with so many new faces after a short camp. Our research finds little chemistry effect beyond the players' own quality. Max Domi's absence costs some skill.

The blue line is old and good. Tanev grades A- (85) and McCabe B+ (79), the best shutdown pair on the roster by a distance. Rielly and Raddysh drive offense on the top pair. Ekman-Larsson and Troy Stecher, a midseason pickup last year, form the third pair. The risk is age: Tanev is 36, Ekman-Larsson 35, and Tanev missed most of last season.

4Who matters most

Every fan knows Toronto's price starts with Matthews. Our absence research adds a less obvious name to the list. Defensemen who play big minutes matter more to the nightly price than their profile suggests, because their minutes go to someone worse. For Toronto, that makes McCabe and a healthy Tanev far more important than their point totals, and it makes the age of this defense group a real risk to the season.

The market reacts to star forwards. It moves much less when a shutdown defenseman sits. On game day, check the blue line first.

5Goaltending: a bet on a comeback

Toronto used five goalies last season and never settled on one. Anthony Stolarz spent the first half well below expected, Joseph Woll was up and down, and Dennis Hildeby, the best of the group, was traded to Tampa Bay in July. The answer was Sergei Bobrovsky, 38, on a three-year contract.

The usual reading is that a two-time Vezina winner with Cup rings stabilizes the crease. Our projection says the opposite. Bobrovsky grades E- after a .877 save percentage and 12 goals below expected in Florida, and goalies his age rarely bounce back. Stolarz grades A- on the strength of three seasons, most of them well above average, even after a rough first half. The better goalie on paper is the one who was already there.

The crowd is kinder to the pair. Daily Faceoff ranks the tandem 18th of 32, and the usual line is that the season hinges on getting the Cup-winning Bobrovsky back. We rank Toronto's goaltending near the bottom of the league and flip the order: Stolarz first, Bobrovsky second.

Depth charts list Bobrovsky as the starter, and a three-year, $21 million contract points the same way. Hiller split preseason games between the two and has not announced how he will share the regular season, so a split close to even is possible, especially with 11 back-to-back sets on the schedule. As a whole, Toronto's goaltending ranks near the bottom of the league in our projection, and that is already part of the rating. For bettors, the nightly starter matters more here than on most teams. Confirm it before you bet.

6Toronto's system: how they score and defend

Jim Hiller's Kings had a clear signature: they kept the puck, took more shots than average and gave up far fewer. Toronto last season was the mirror image. It allowed more shot attempts than any team in the league and more of them off the rush. Hiller's Kings were top five in expected goals against, and our profile of his teams shows the same. How quickly that structure takes is the biggest variable in this preview.

Offense: talent over volume. Toronto took fewer shot attempts than most teams and still scored at a middle-of-the-pack rate, because its top shooters finish. Only two teams scored a smaller share of their goals on the power play, which is why Raddysh matters.

Defense: too much traffic. Toronto faced the most shot attempts in the league and the second-most goals against. Opponents got out in transition more than against any other team. Hiller's system is built to stop exactly that.

What it means for scoring. Toronto's games averaged 6.67 total goals last season: 3.07 for and 3.60 against per game, against a league average of 3.08 per team (6.16 per game). Our team scoring ratings carry that into 2026-27: a bottom-ten offense on volume and the weakest defense in the league, which makes Toronto one of the most open, high-scoring matchups on the schedule until the structure changes.

7Special teams

The power play underperformed its talent, ranking in the bottom half of the league on goals and on chances. The penalty kill did the opposite: it allowed goals at a top-ten rate even though its chances against were among the worst in the league.

How the power play works. The personnel is familiar except for the point. Raddysh arrives from Tampa Bay after 23 power-play points and 10 goals, far more than any Toronto defenseman managed last season, and he gives the unit a shooting threat from the top. Nylander works the flank, Tavares, with 11 power-play goals, does his damage in front, and Matthews takes the one-timer. Roslovic fills the fifth spot.

Matthews is the swing factor. He had only 12 power-play points last season, well below his usual output. If his shot returns to form, the unit has more upside than its 19th-place finish suggests.

How the penalty kill works. McCabe and Tanev block shots and clear the front on the back end, and the summer brought two new defensive forwards: Blueger from Vancouver and Sissons from Vegas. Both give the kill more honest defensive players up front than last season's group had. Tanev, who played only 11 games last season, is the injury risk to watch.

What to watch. Both units are likely to drift toward the middle. The power play should score more with a real point shot, and the penalty kill allowed too many good chances for its goals-against rate to hold. The net effect is small, which is why neither changes our view of the team much.

8What would change our view

• Shots againstIf Toronto's shot attempts against drop toward league average by November, Hiller's system is working and the rating climbs.
• The creaseA Bobrovsky bounce-back would change the outlook more than any skater could. Our projection doubts it; October will tell.
• McKennaA quick adjustment gives Toronto two real scoring lines.
• An old blue lineTanev at 36 after surgery, Ekman-Larsson at 35. Injuries here would hurt more than the market expects.
• Domi's timelineOut indefinitely. His return adds skill to a checking-heavy bottom six.
• Early-season formThe first 20 to 30 games say less than they seem. Hot and cold starts mostly reflect shooting and goaltending swings.