Preseason is still more than a month away for the Toronto Maple Leafs, but the team will undoubtedly be considering all possible avenues to strengthen the team ahead of the new campaign.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are well-known to be top-heavy, especially on offense, with star players Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and William Nylander able to carry the majority of the load. However, depth scoring has been a particular struggle for the team both in the regular and post-season.
The Leafs don’t have much in the way of manoeuvrability, but they can still look at some promising options with the $1.275 million cap space they do have, with several players who scored double-digit goals last year still on the open market.
This is doubly the case when considering the possibility of a Professional Tryout (PTO), which allows the team the opportunity to take a closer look at players who are without a deal and weigh up whether or not they would be worth the financial gamble on a full-time contract for the upcoming season.
Many players would make sense for the Toronto Maple Leafs to consider offering a PTO. Still, there is one in particular who could potentially have the biggest upside if he were to show the team flashes of his earlier career promise.
Who is Kevin Labanc?
Kevin Labanc has thus far played his entire career with the San Jose Sharks, amassing 428 regular season appearances for the Western Conference team since his debut in the 2016-17 season.
Labanc has been a solid depth piece for the team for most of his career, with a particularly impressive showing in the 2018-19 season where he posted 17 goals and 56 total points in a full 82-game campaign.
He has 225 career points (82 goals, 143 assists) and has averaged 14:24 of ice time across his eight years in the NHL. But, why is he still unsigned?
Well, Labanc earned himself a decent-paying $4.725 million-a-year deal with the Sharks that recently expired; during this time, he has had a couple of injury-riddled seasons that have significantly hampered his production.
This past season saw him register just nine points in 46 games with the Sharks, numbers far from what is expected from someone earning as much as he was.
Looking at Labanc at face value, especially off two out of the past three seasons, it would not seem to make much sense for the Leafs to consider him even on a PTO, but when looking deeper at the situation, the 28-year-old could be an ideal addition.
Firstly, out of his eight top-tier seasons, Labanc has hit double-digit goals in five. The seasons he didn’t? His rookie campaign (55 games), last season (46 games, serious injury limiting his playing time) and the 2021-22 season (another injury-hit season where he only played 21 games).
What’s also interesting about Labanc’s production, is that in the seasons where he rarely featured, he has been deployed heavily in the defensive zone (54.7%) compared to the rest of his career where he was deployed in the offensive zone on average 59.13%.