The Maple Leafs held a practice at Ford Performance Centre on Monday.
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Following Saturday’s overtime loss, Anthony Stolarz called out his team for an inconsistent start to the season. As part of his criticism, the Leafs goalie singled out William Nylander for what he perceived to be a poor effort on the Seattle Kraken’s game-winning goal.
After the dust settled, the goalie pulled the star winger aside to talk about what happened.
“It’s all good,” Nylander assured reporters on Monday. “Look, we’re teammates. He’s a great guy. There’s nothing that we need to, you know, talk about here. He talked to me after and it’s all good. It’s been no issue since.”
“He’s someone I admire and someone I respect deeply,” Stolarz said. “There’s a reason he’s been in this league for so long. He’s a hell of a player. He pushes me and I push him. You look at his offensive skill, he’s made me a better goalie just by facing him every day in practice.”
Nylander leads the Leafs with 11 points in six games, which is tied for third overall in the NHL entering play on Monday. But Nylander also got beat up the ice by Kraken defenceman Josh Mahura in overtime on Saturday.
“To be honest, I don’t really remember it,” Nylander said. “I haven’t seen it since so I don’t know. I think he just beat me, beat me up the ice there. That’s all I can really remember.”
“I get paid to stop the puck too,” Stolarz said. “At the end of the day, it’s on me as well.”
Just early-season issues?
Stolarz: I mean, a lot of guys have been here for a while. Overtime, you can’t let someone beat you up the ice there & gets a clear-cut breakaway. A minute left, you want to be on the ice in that situation you gotta work hard … It cost us a point https://t.co/3bCHR1sFRS
— Mark Masters (@markhmasters) October 19, 2025
‘He pushes me, I push him’: Stolarz, Nylander on the same page following Saturday’s loss Anthony Stolarz and William Nylander have talked to each other since the goaltender’s post game comments following Saturday’s overtime loss to the Kraken. At the end of the day, Stolarz said the entire team is always looking to push each other in order to achieve their ultimate goal.
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The Leafs, as a team, also addressed Stolarz’s comments.
“We’re a veteran group in here,” said top-line centre Auston Matthews, who is in his second season as captain. “We’re all big boys. I mean, you don’t need to beat around the bush. It’s an easy conversation we all had. And, you know, you just move on from it. Close the door and move on. We gotta be better, and we will be.”
The Leafs are 3-2-1 despite playing five games at home and facing only one team that made the playoffs last season. So, it’s true that Toronto is not playing up to its potential. Still, Craig Berube would have preferred if Stolarz refrained from airing his grievances publicly.
“Listen, it happens a lot,” the coach said. “It’s happened over years and years. Players get frustrated and sometimes they say things that they [should] just keep in the room. That’s all. But it’s over with.”
The focus is now on the surging New Jersey Devils, winners of four straight, who will face the Leafs in Toronto on Tuesday night.
Berube appreciates Stolarz’s frustration but would prefer comments ‘stay in the room’ Maple Leafs head coach Craig Berube chalked up Anthony Stolarz’s post game comments as frustration and something that happens from time to time, but would prefer those types of comments stay in the room. Captain Auston Matthews said the bottom line is the team needs to be better while Stolarz spoke about how he sees his leadership role on the team.
“We’ve had some discussions and we love each other,” said Stolarz. “It’s a family in here and we’re looking to move on.”
Although Stolarz didn’t back down or walk back any of what he said on Saturday night when he blasted the team for being outworked in the first two periods against the Kraken.
“I’m a vocal guy,” the 31-year-old said. “I’m going to continue to be a vocal guy. I’m a competitor. It’s the reason I’ve gotten to this point in my career.”
“He’s an honest guy,” Matthews said. “He just kind of tells you how it is. There’s not really any holding back. He’s pretty laidback in general, but when it comes to playing, he’s a competitor. I think you see that in the way he plays, in the way that he competes out there for us.”
Before signing in Toronto during the summer of 2024, Stolarz backed up Sergei Bobrovsky during Florida’s Stanley Cup run.
“They had vocal leaders, and they still have a lot of guys there as well,” said Stolarz, who signed a four-year extension during training camp. “Just being able to witness that is something that I want to bring to this team, just that leadership role.”
The Leafs took the Panthers to seven games in the second round of the playoffs last spring despite losing Stolarz to a concussion in the first game of the series.
“We have those same intangibles, and that’s why I feel so passionately about everything, just because you see the similarities in both teams,” said Stolarz, who led the NHL in save percentage last season (.926) while playing a career high 34 games.
“We’re on the cusp of doing great things, and that’s why I’m so passionate about it, because we’re right there. I feel like we can do it and go all the way.”
Stolarz shared the net with Joseph Woll last season before winning the starter’s job for the playoffs. With Woll away from the team on personal leave, Stolarz has started five of the first six games this season.
What impact will Stolarz public call out have on Leafs? TSN Hockey analyst Marc Denis and TSN Director of Scouting Craig Button join Domino’s That’s Hockey to discuss what kind of impact Anthony Stolarz’s public call out will have on the Maple Leafs.
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The Leafs have cleared the air in the wake of Stolarz’s comments, but the issues raised by the goalie still need to be addressed. For one thing, Stolarz believes Toronto’s forwards can do a better job of getting to the opposition net.
“I agree,” Berube said. “I mean, we’ve talked about it quite a bit. We could do a better job of being harder around the offensive net, getting there more, fighting for space. That makes it tough on the goalie and tough on the other team. Net fronts are important, whether you’re defending them or offensively getting there. So yeah, for sure, that’s an opportunity for us. We got to be better in that situation.”
Defending Stolarz is also an issue. The Leafs goalie has already been run into multiple times this season. Seattle’s Mason Marchment crashed into Stolarz in the second period on Saturday. The 6-foot-6, 248-pound New Jersey native got up and pushed the net over while defencemen Brandon Carlo and Jake McCabe looked on.
“It’s not the UFC,” Stolarz noted. “You’re not going to go and start a ground and pound. So you can’t really do much there with him. I know the guys have my back, and I have theirs. You look at two games ago, [Matt] Rempe put his arm on John [Tavares], and you never know what’s going to happen, so I just went out and put my arm on him just to kind of let him know, ‘Hey, I’m here too.’ You mess with one of us, you mess with all of us.”
The bigger issue, Berube suggested, is what happened on the third Kraken goal by Vince Dunn. On that play, Carlo ended up pushing Jaden Schwartz into Stolarz, which prevented the Leafs goalie from making a save.
“Things happened fast,” Carlo said. “I was doing my best to box him out there. He got behind me a little bit … I just need to try and do my best to keep him to the outside and then that doesn’t happen.”
“It’s finding your guys early enough to be able to box them about and it doesn’t always happen,” Berube said. “There’s a lot of good players that are good at fighting for the net and getting to the net. We were really good at it last year and we’re going to keep banging away at it.”
‘I know the guys have my back’: Stolarz reflects on being run into by Marchment One of Anthony Stolarz’s criticisms on Saturday was the lack of reaction of his teammates after being run by Kraken forward Mason Marchment. The netminder realizes there is a fine line between defending teammates and staying disciplined. Head coach Craig Berube emphasized the importance of net-front presence on both ends of the ice.
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Carlo was reluctant to go after Marchment following the collision with Stolarz.
“I saw, the referee call the penalty,” he explained. “You don’t want to do too much to retaliate … Once you see Stollie get up and be angry you want to try and give him a shot. But, overall, you want to go on the power play as well. So it’s a weird area to be in. But overall, I think the power play is a useful thing in that situation.”
Toronto trailed Seattle 3-2 at the time. The Leafs did not score on the ensuing power play, but did score on the man advantage in the third period to tie things up.
The Leafs power play is now clicking at 14.3 per cent (2/14) which ranks 26th overall.
“We are attempting shots and shooting pucks,” Berube said. “We’ve got a couple [goals] now so that’s a good thing … The one area I think we could be better at is hitting the net. I think we missed opportunities on the power play where we don’t hit the net.”
The Leafs drew a season high four power-play opportunities on Saturday. Toronto is tied for 28th in power-play opportunities this season.
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Max Domi moved up to the top line at Monday’s practice, skating beside Matthews and Matthew Knies.
“I know he’s played in the past with those guys so I just wanted to get to that, just see how it looks, and see where we go from there,” Berube said.
The coach planned to start the season with Domi in that spot, but changed course after centre Scott Laughton got hurt. Berube felt he needed to shore up the centre position so he moved Domi to the middle of the third line.
Domi caught fire while playing on a line with Tyler Bertuzzi and Matthews late in the 2023-24 season. Will the chemistry with Matthews come back right away?
“I mean, we’ll find out tomorrow,” Matthews said. “He’s an easy guy to play with. He sees the ice extremely well. We’ve played together in the past, so I think it’s good to have that chemistry and that experience together.”
Matthews has scored just one 5-on-5 goal this season while seeing a number of different players rotate in on the right side of the top line.
“It just kind of can lack consistency at times,” Matthews said of his line. “There’s good segments and then there’s obviously, you know, segments where I think we’re defending too much and giving up too many odd mans. And those are just little details, little things that we can clean up and make it easier on ourselves.”
Matias Maccelli started the first couple of games beside Matthews and Knies before giving way to rookie Easton Cowan. Cowan was bumped off the top line in each of the last two games with Nylander taking shifts beside Matthews and Knies.
Cowan skated as an extra at Monday’s practice and the 20-year-old projects to be a healthy scratch against the Devils.
Steven Lorentz moved to the middle of the fourth line between Nick Robertson and Calle Jarnkrok, who was a scratch on Saturday.
Leafs Ice Chips: Domi joins Matthews line; Cowan projects to be scratch The Maple Leafs will have another variation of their top line when they host the Devils Tuesday night, with Max Domi moving up to join Auston Matthews and Matthew Knies at Monday’s practice. TSN’s Mark Masters has more, despite surviving an errant puck while viewing the morning skate.
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Defenceman Morgan Rielly scored the opening goal for the Leafs on Saturday and is now up to six points in six games.
“Just being aggressive,” Tavares observed of Rielly’s play. “I don’t think he’s feeling in between or second-guessing. I think he’s just trusting his instincts and playing his game. He knows the type of player he is and the impact he can make just from how he sees it, his skill set, his ability to skate.”
Rielly produced just 41 points in 82 games last season while adjusting to Berube’s new system. The coach started last year, his first in Toronto, by urging the longest-serving Leaf to reduce the risk in his game.
Rielly seems to be back to his old offensive-minded self so far this season.
“He’s awesome,” said Carlo, who is Rielly’s partner. “You can see how much he’s getting up and involved in the play. It’s been a lot of fun to watch and just to see how much he can create.”
Morgan Rielly scores off-the-rush.
He now leads all defencemen with 6 scoring chances off-the-rush this season, in this his 6th game.
It took him until his 39th game last season to have that many. https://t.co/aNJcNLTwHv
— Mike Kelly (@MikeKellyNHL) October 18, 2025
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Tavares scored twice on Saturday and, in the process, hit the 500-point milestone with the Leafs.
Tavares, who played the first nine seasons of his career with the New York Islanders, is the fourth player in NHL history to record 500 points with multiple franchises joining Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Ron Francis.
“It’s incredible,” raved Rielly. “He’s just a hockey player through and through. Just a pro. It’s been a real joy to have the chance to play with him and watch him operate. He deserves to be in that company all day. He’s a very impressive guy.”
Berube appreciates how Tavares attacks every day the same way.
“It’s the consistency he brings every game,” the coach said. “He brings the effort and what needs to be done. He doesn’t take nights off, and that’s why he’s able to accomplish what he’s been able to.”
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Lines at Monday’s practice:
Knies – Matthews – Domi
Maccelli – Tavares – Nylander
Joshua – Roy – McMann
Robertson – Lorentz – Jarnkrok
Blais, Cowan
McCabe – Tanev
Rielly – Carlo
Benoit – Ekman-Larsson
Myers
Stolarz
Primeau
Power play units at Monday’s practice:
QB: Rielly
Flanks: Matthews, Nylander
Middle: Tavares
Net front: Knies
QB: Ekman-Larsson
Flanks: Domi, Maccelli
Middle: Robertson
Net front: McMann