What’s the Single Most Important Change for the Toronto Maple Leafs?

The Toronto Maple Leafs are returning home in the first round of the playoffs. NHL Rumors will swirl about what they will do this offseason. Everyone expects change, but we will find out what that change looks like on Friday.

But for now, TSN Hockey Analyst Martin Biron, on the latest edition of the Talking Point, looks at what the most critical change the Toronto Maple Leafs can make this offseason.

FullPressHockey.com Transcriptions***

Martin Biron: “Well, the most important change for the Toronto Maple Leafs this offseason is to change their core four players. Somebody has to go. The roster has to look different. But I understand last year, I said you got to move away from the core four. You got to make a change in the top four guys, especially those four Forwards upfront with the Toronto Maple Leafs.

That is Matthews, Nylander, or Marner. Tavares, you’ve got to make a change. I don’t anticipate anything happening with Auston Matthews and William Nylander. They had career years this year, and they are entering a new extension: Matthews’ five-year extension, and Nylander’s eight-year extension, which starts next season.

So I don’t anticipate anything to change when it comes to those two players, but you do have Tavares and Marner that are options and you have to look at those options. A couple of things: once you look at the team that just beat you in the first round. They had significant changes when you look at their roster, not that they wanted to. But they had no Patrice Bergeron. No, David Krejci, right. It can happen. It doesn’t mean that because you move away from a top player or a leader that your team is automatically going to stumble down.

FULL PRESS HOCKEY: William Nylander Is Toronto

And number two, it didn’t work right. It just didn’t work. So now Brad Treliving. You saw what your core four can do. You saw what your coaching staff has been trying to do, and you have to change and understand maybe the coaching staff is going to go, but if you bring up a new coaching staff, a new coach with the same roster, I think the same results will happen over and over again.

So it is now time to make a drastic change up front with the core four and see where it’s gonna take you. You added Max Domi and Tyler Bertuzzi. And you saw that that worked out really well. They weren’t significant pieces. But depth pieces were really good. Matthew Knies‘s rookie year looks pretty decent. I think next year, a second year, he’ll take an even bigger step forward.

You do need help onn the back end. I feel like defense is the one need that the Toronto Maple Leafs have been trying to patch the last few years. So use that flexibility, maybe through trade or through cap flexibility, to be able to bolster your defense, and obviously, Joseph Woll is going to be the guy moving forward.

So to use a line from a very famous movie Dumb and Dumber. You can triple stamp a double stamp. You can’t continue to triple down on the double down that you did last year. It didn’t work so you got to move a different direction, and you have to move somebody from the core four.”