The NHL season is quickly approaching. To speed up the wait until the puck finally drops on the season, I’ll be previewing one team every day. I’ll be going one division at a time and publishing these in the order I think they’ll finish from first to worst. I’m currently going through the Atlantic Division.

Last year’s finish: 8th in Atlantic Division

Playoffs: No playoffs

Predicted finish: 6th in Atlantic Division (no playoffs)

Last year was the year from Hell for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Mitch Marner left Toronto and had the most playoff points in the league last year while leading Vegas to the Stanley Cup Final. Meanwhile, the Maple Leafs completely failed in trying to replace him. Auston Matthews had a disappointing year before tearing his MCL late in the season. Toronto lost whatever edge it had offensively under head coach Craig Berube and couldn’t stop bleeding goals. By the time Radko Gudas took out Matthews in mid-March, the tank was on.

After missing the playoffs for the first time in a decade, it felt like Toronto was stuck in no-man’s land. The Maple Leafs don’t own their first-round picks in 2027 and 2028, so rebuilding isn’t an option. But Toronto didn’t exactly have a ton of assets to make a big move.

Toronto benefitted from perhaps the biggest bail-out in NHL history when it won the draft lottery and selected Gavin McKenna. It might take some time for the undersized McKenna to adapt to the NHL level, but his offensive skillset and production he’s had as a prospect are unmatched. It’s exactly what the Maple Leafs needed to rejuvenate an aging, expensive roster.

There are a lot of new faces in Toronto. The Maple Leafs fired their general manager and brought in former Coyotes general manager John Chayka, whose hiring was met with widespread acclaim and absolutely zero criticism. Under Berube, the Maple Leafs were too defensive and boring, and they canned him for Jim Hiller, whose Kings were… too defensive and boring. Toronto absolutely needed some new voices, but these choices feel a little questionable.

Toronto fell apart last year in part because its supporting cast around Matthews, William Nylander and John Tavares was horrific. Matthews, Nylander and Tavares weren’t exactly stellar, but the results further down the lineup were even worse. Without Matthews at five on five, the Maple Leafs had a 45.5 percent expected goals share and sported a minus-39 goal differential. Toronto finished the season 28th in five-on-five expected goals share, so it was clear that Toronto needed to overhaul everything.

Love it or hate it, you can’t say that Chayka didn’t try this summer. The Maple Leafs made a couple of big splashes by bringing in Darren Raddysh and Sergei Bobrovsky, but they also completely rebuilt their forward depth with Jack Roslovic, Teddy Blueger, Brandon Duhaime, Colton Sissons and Nick Paul. It’s certainly been an interesting offseason.

Raddysh and Bobrovsky are both gambles. Raddysh, signed to an eight-year deal that pays him $8.5 million, is coming off a career year where he had 22 goals and 70 points, and his underlying numbers were really good as well. The risk is that last year is the only year where he’s done that and he’s 30 years old. Toronto’s blue line has desperately needed someone like Raddysh for a while now — especially with Morgan Rielly’s decline — but there’s no guarantee that Raddysh’s play last year in Tampa will carry over into Toronto.

Bobrovsky is a big name, but it’s been a while since he’s put together an elite season. He hasn’t had a season with double-digit goals saved above expected since 2021-22, and Bobrovsky was one of the league’s worst goalies last year. Bobrovsky will turn 38 before the start of the season, and Toronto will be paying him $7 million for the next three seasons. With the inconsistent Anthony Stolarz behind him, it could be an interesting season between the pipes in Toronto.

As for the rest of Toronto’s spending spree, it’s aggressively fine. Roslovic is a useful middle-six forward, and Blueger, Duhaime, Sissons and Paul are defense-first bottom six players. They should be an improvement from last year’s crop, but they probably won’t move the needle that much for Toronto, either. There’s still a pretty big hole that Marner left behind that Toronto still hasn’t really replaced, and the Maple Leafs spent a whole lot of money on this bottom-six makeover.

McKenna is going to be the X factor for Toronto this year. Even if Toronto’s stars come back to life under a new regime and Raddysh continues to be a legitimate top-pairing defenseman, the Maple Leafs are going to need more than just the Matthews line. It took some time for McKenna to adjust to the college game last year before he caught fire in the second half of the season. Rookie seasons for top picks are all over the place — sometimes you get a Macklin Celebrini, sometimes you get a Jack Hughes — but McKenna even being a second-line caliber player for the Maple Leafs this year would be huge.

It wouldn’t take much for this year to be better than last year for the Leafs. The Maple Leafs have improved over the offseason, and getting McKenna is a huge boost now and for years to come. The question is how much better are they?

Advanced stats are from Hockey Stats