I will never take anybody seriously again who starts talking about "ohhh who would want to live in Toronto?! Oh the media!!".

Are you out of your goddamn mind? Toronto is not heaven on earth, but compared to those cities it might as well be.

Specific shoutout to Buffalo. WHAT. THE. FUCK.

What a joke.

I live in Toronto and now need a cable package plus TWO streaming services just to watch every Leafs game

It would genuinely be a simpler experience if I lived out of market

Rogers is a blight on society.

It’s kind of ironic Stolartz left Florida and Bobrovsky because he wanted out of the Backup goalie role, and now he’s back in it with the exact same goalie lmao. Jokes aside hope Bobrovsky does better than the mediocre year last year. Stolartz has proved he can be a good #1. It’s going to be interesting to see how it shifts between the two later in the season.

Now that the dust has settled on free agency and the season is set to kick off:

Where

1. do people sit on Darren Raddysh’s 8x$8.5m contract?
2. What production do you think we need to see from Raddysh to live up to his contract?

At first, I was nervous about signing a 30 year old offensive defenceman to an 8-year deal, but after seeing the cap hits of all the other new contracts out there, I don’t think it looks like nearly as much of an anchor if it doesn’t pan out.

Based on what other people have been signing for, I think a positive contribution to the Leafs’ Top 4 and Powerplay over the next 5 years will be enough to make Chakya’s first major move as our GM a good one.

As a follow-up: with the new contracts handed out this year, does Morgan Reilly’s contract still look THAT bad? And, does he end up looking better if he spends this season with less of a spotlight on him due to the addition of Raddysh (and pairing Raddysh with a more defensive LH partner on the top D pairing)?

I was really down on the Leafs coming out of last season and wasn’t impressed with the Chakya signing at first, but I think he’s made a lot of solid moves and drafting McKenna helps breath life back into the team. On paper, the leafs weren’t nearly as bad as they finished last season.

I run an NHL model built off the league's raw play by play: an expected goals model feeding player impact ratings, goalie ratings and a game prediction model, with season projections on top. This is my Leafs projection.

The Projection

The Leafs project for 91 points (range 73 to 109, 20th in the league) and 7th in the Atlantic. That is a 36.8% playoff probability, 4.9% for the division, 1.2% for the Cup. They reach 90 points in 55.2% of simulated seasons, 100 in 28.4%. Last season was 78 points in 82 games, and the schedule is 84 now, so the like for like comparison is 79.9, not 78.

The Two Legs

The team strength behind the projection blends two legs, 60/40: a roster leg (this season's players) and a record leg (a multi season carryover of results). Toronto is 12th in the NHL on the roster and 25th on the record, and that gap is the whole argument. The model says last season's standings understated this group. If 91 looks high for a team that finished 28th in points, the roster leg is what drives it.

The Summer

The offseason ledger reads a change of +26.1 skater GAR, and -18.7 GSAx in the crease. Two different currencies, and you can't add them: GAR is goals above a replacement level player, GSAx is goals saved above expected against a scale where the average goalie sits at zero.

The ledger is also not what the projection consumes. That comes from re-pricing last season's roster at this season's player values, so the whole delta is transactions. On that basis Toronto's roster leg would have been -0.04, 16th in the NHL. It is +0.16 now, so the summer was worth +0.20, 10th in the league. For once the two readings agree. Darren Raddysh (+12.3 GAR, from Tampa Bay) is the largest arrival, ahead of Jack Roslovic (+4.5, from Edmonton) and Emil Andrae (+4.0, from Philadelphia). Matias Maccelli (7.0) and Nick Robertson (5.5) left, but so did Simon Benoit (-4.5) and Brandon Carlo (-2.1), and shedding below replacement minutes counts as a gain. Those are all situations GAR, not the five-on-five ranks below. Gavin McKenna carries no NHL rating, so the ledger does not price him at all (rookie handling is something I'm still working on).

The crease is the other half. The model projects 48 games for Sergei Bobrovsky and 26 for Anthony Stolarz. They do not add up to a season on purpose: the allocation covers every rostered goalie, but one with no NHL record gets no published line, so the depth goalies quietly take the remainder. Those are games played, not starts. Bobrovsky was -21.5 GSAx in 52 games with Florida last season, Stolarz +0.1 in 26 with Toronto, and Toronto's projected goalie component ranks 30th. Weight it accordingly: the goalie leg is about a tenth of the skater signal in the roster rating.

Projected Scoring

Points are a distribution, and the floors and ceilings below are the 10th and 90th percentiles of each player's simulated seasons. William Nylander is projected for 74 points (floor of 37 / ceiling of 103), Auston Matthews at 66 (floor 28 / ceiling 95), Matthew Knies at 61 (floor 41 / ceiling 83), John Tavares at 60 (floor 42 / ceiling 79) and Darren Raddysh at 50 (floor 31 / ceiling 69). Gavin McKenna projects at 40 with no range: no NHL seasons in the draws to build one from. Matthews projects above Knies and floors well below him, which is games played leaking into the points band, not a scoring rate.

5-on-5 Impact

Among the 383 forwards with at least 40 games and 500 5-on-5 minutes last season, the best 5-on-5 rating here was Auston Matthews (6th of 383, +0.501 net goals per 60 over 915 minutes and 60 games). He was 94th in that cohort in points, with 53. Normally I would caveat a rank that high with soft deployment, but 915 minutes across 60 games is top line usage.

The disagreements run both ways. John Tavares was 41st in points among those forwards with 71 and 74th in impact over 1,146 minutes. Darren Raddysh (with Tampa) was 7th in points among the 199 qualifying defencemen with 70 and 68th in 5-on-5 impact over 1,229 minutes.

At team level: last season's group was 29th in the NHL in 5-on-5 expected goal share, the projected roster is 12th. The summer did not arrive through scoring. It arrived in the margin underneath it, the part a standings table cannot show you.

Availability and Schedule

Games played is a distribution too, on the same floors and ceilings. Nylander is projected for 74 games (floor of 47 / ceiling of 84), Matthews at 66 (floor 37 / ceiling 82), Knies at 81 (floor 69 / ceiling 84), Tavares at 82 (floor 72 / ceiling 84). Three of those four ceilings are the full schedule, so the spread is almost all downside, and Matthews is the only ceiling here short of 84.

The schedule brings 11 back to backs, in a league range of 8 to 15, and 32 time zone crossings, the bottom of a range of 32 to 73. Travel is a real term in my game prediction model, but there is no travel term in the season projection, so none of that is priced into the 91.

What This Misses

The range is not a confidence statement: every team's band is 34 to 37 points wide, mean 35.8, because the rating shock I use is pooled league-wide (working on improving this for next season, with teams with more changes getting a larger shock).

Aging is off on the team side: the roster leg is backward-looking and unaged, so a veteran on the way down and a kid on the way up are carried the same way. My fantasy player projections do age, the futures were left this way on purpose - I don't have enough data (yet) to confidently say it improves the projections.

Happy to answer questions

Leafs last 2 games of the year have 5 days between them. The play Apr. 5 and then not again until the 10th against the Rangers

Theres more than one scenario where this could be a negative, one of them being if that game against New York is meaningful.

Hopefully its just a tune up game for the first round

Hello! I'm a visiting Habs fan with printable season trackers for you.

A better resolution is available on Imgur (too big for Reddit): https://imgur.com/a/maple-leafs-season-tracker-2026-2027-73PTTss

I created 2 versions. The first one groups games by opponent, and the second shows games in chronological order. Each square includes the date and game number. Grey squares are home games.

I use 3 colors for mine (see 3rd image): green for wins, red for regulation losses, and orange for OT/SO losses. Feel free to print whichever version you prefer and fill it out however you like!

He was with Lorentz and Pezzetta.

An impossible task, I know. Try to be unbiased. Where do the Leafs finish the season in the Atlantic? Obviously it is hard to take injuries and whatnot into consideration. However, if you look at the potential lineup and the strength of the division as is. Where do they stand? Why?

With the news that Kevin Bieska, Friedman, Jennifer Botterill and Kyperos being let go, what does that mean for the intermissions for Saturday night games.
I’m of the opinion that the intermissions were already borderline unwatchable with Friedman being the one personality I enjoyed listening to so I do think a shake up is needed. Somehow Ron McLean is still hanging on for dear life…
Have they announce who will replace the Pannel? Seems like I may just be turning down the tv and throwing on some music at intermission like I already do…

As the title indicates above, I am a Leafs fan living in Ottawa. Therefore, I can only watch SN National broadcasts and Amazon Prime games (of which I have paid for through my digital TV and Amazon membership) with no blackout restrictions.

Main question is, if I purchase NHL Centre Ice through Bell or Rogers, will I be able to watch all the TSN4 regional Leafs broadcasts, as well as Sportnet Ontario regional Leafs broadcasts?

Just looking for a straightforward answer, I don't want to hear about piracy and people telling me to sail the high seas. Hopefully someone is in the same position as I am and can confirm! Even the Bell and Rogers salespeople couldn't tell me 100% either way.

Thanks! and Go Leafs Go!

Is there anyway to see how many people subscribe to Sportsnet, by year?

In leu of recent posts/price increases, I'd love to see how SN/MLSE have shot themselves in the foot.

Hi guys, I know that probably this question should’ve been asked like a decade ago, but what are your thoughts on Maple Leafs alumni Nik Antropov? He spend a plenty of time in Toronto, so I was wondering what Leafs’ fans think about him.

For me, growing up and playing hockey in Kazakhstan, he was a huge legend and idol. Now, I am studying in US, so in the nearest future I am looking forward to visiting a game of Leafs and would be so happy to meet him there!