TORONTO — Neither the eye test nor the numbers like the start the Leafs have had to the 2025-26 season. The fans haven’t liked it. The players haven’t liked it, the coaches haven’t, the managers haven’t, MLSE hasn’t, my kids haven’t, my neighbour’s dog hasn’t … you get the idea.
He says it’s been ruff.
I am extremely fortunate that my brain tends to look for the bright side of things, so take that with a grain of salt when I say this, but listen: If I squint, I can see a world where the Leafs sort things out a bit here.
And to “sort things out a bit,” in a league with stultifying parity, that means they’d once again be a part of the giant pack of teams not named Colorado with a chance to win some playoff rounds, at best. If they climbed the standings enough to get to that illustrious perch, they’d more likely be deadline buyers than sellers — whether you think that’s right or wrong — and with that, they could be better yet in the short term.
Bleak though it may be, that’s probably the most optimistic outcome for this Leafs season: They climb the standings to where they don’t have to play the Atlantic winner in Round 1, and so they have a chance, and who knows from there.
They say “hope isn’t a plan,” but I guess it’s better than having no hope.
-
Real Kyper and Bourne
Nick Kypreos and Justin Bourne talk all things hockey with some of the biggest names in the game. Watch live every weekday on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+ — or listen live on Sportsnet 590 The FAN — from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET.
Full episode
I’m mentioning optimistic outcomes because there’s a world where the Leafs season to date has represented just about the worst-case scenario of their possible outcomes, were you to travel in time and re-run this season a thousand times over. Compare the talent they’ve got around the league and they’ve still got the bones of a good, competitive roster.
They made major off-season changes up front, starting the season with four new forwards in the lineup, which led to Nick Kypreos saying on Real Kyper and Bourne that they’d need 15-20 games to get on the same page, predicting, “It could look ugly for a while.”
Worse was that Joseph Woll surprisingly disappeared in the first few days of camp and suddenly the whole of the workload was heaped on Anthony Stolarz, who only occasionally ceded the net to Cayden Primeau, both of whom struggled mightily behind a team that “looked ugly.” It was a brutal environment in which to play goal.
Then the injuries began, first to Scott Laughton (which somehow blew up all four lines), then Chris Tanev, and on to the captain Auston Matthews, to Matthew Knies and Brandon Carlo and Nicholas Roy. John Tavares — who has arguably been the Leafs’ most important player — was averaging about 23 minutes a night at one point, which I think most people would tell you is less than ideal, and the team floundered.
I’d say “fun fact” to preface the following, but it’s not that fun. So, fact: There have been zero games this season in which the Leafs scored first and then just kept leading until the end of the game. Not a single other team in the league can claim it hasn’t led wire-to-wire from the game’s first goal until the end. (Three teams in the league have done it only once: the Canadiens, Senators and Flyers. Shout out to my guy Jason Murdoch of Sportsnet for these tidbits.)
It’s become common to use U.S. Thanksgiving as this sort of official cut-off, as usually by this point of the season it’s clear who’s good and who isn’t. Well, the day before that American holiday, as pie crusts were being prepared across the land of our southern neighbour, the Leafs sat dead last in the Atlantic.
But the whole “It’s always darkest before the dawn” thing seems particularly relevant here, as indicated by a board Sportsnet ran during the Columbus game:
They’ve been bad, but the season somehow hasn’t gotten away from them, not entirely. They picked a good year to toe-pick out of the starting blocks.
You can see a world where this turns. No, I don’t think it happens on their current road trip (with four games against good teams left, a 2-2 outcome seems likely), but the pulled-from-the-ashes win against Columbus highlighted how Woll’s return could buy them time.
In that game, they saw the return of Matthews, Knies and Roy, and with nobody suffering a recurrence of injury, those guys have now got a game under their belt to help get their wind back and to find their stride.
Now healthy, they’re finally scratching those players most deserving, regardless of salary. In the pressbox on Friday, you’re seeing Dakota Joshua, Matias Maccelli and possibly Max Domi. If there’s a battle for the depth ice time, I like their odds of getting more out of those guys, who have more to give.
Those guys, by the way, would by now have a much better idea of what to expect out of the Leafs system, linemates and coaching. And, hell, just the market in general. Like William Nylander demonstrates, it turns out life goes on if people say mean things about you online.
I recognize Stolarz isn’t yet back, but he’s not supposed to be gone for too much longer. Given how Woll has played — and this is the key to it all — if they can get them going at the same time behind a healthier forward group, they’re going to be in games every night, and you can see them finding their stride again.
That stride isn’t perfect. Last season, coach Craig Berube had them playing a style that many don’t love watching. The idea is that you don’t care if the other team has the puck, as long as it’s out by the paint. You’re playing the battle of the high-danger areas, trying to out-chance them in that regard, rather than just possessing the puck and taking meaningless shots. Last season, the Leafs showed they could play this way: get high-danger looks, prevent more than you get and get great goaltending.
Most would agree that this roster can’t win a Stanley Cup playing like that. But they’ve shown they can win enough to make some noise with that style, just last season. At least that version of their game should still be attainable.
They’re obviously still battling. The problem with starting poorly is that you lose your safety net. If they never get fully healthy and succumb to more injuries, it could turf their playoff hopes. If Stolarz is out long term and this whole thing falls on Woll, it could hurt his play, and they could be in trouble.
So it’s a high-wire act from here, balancing as they walk above the gorge that is the missed playoff abyss, a journey they’ve successfully completed nine straight years. As they try to get there a 10th time, it’s not tough to see it happening. They’ve done it so many times before. But any misstep now means it’s over, and when you miss the playoffs once, it gets awfully hard to get back to the top of the ridge to start the journey the next time.
But next year is next year, and this Leafs team — and management team — is focusing on getting back to good this very season. The march to U.S. Thanksgiving hasn’t been promising, but there’s reason to believe there’s better days ahead.
