The Toronto Maple Leafs are 4-3 after seven games, and some things are becoming obvious.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are off to an OK, so-so, mediocre start to the 2024-25 NHL season.
After a frustrating opening night against the Montreal Canadiens, the Toronto Maple Leafs played a series of strong games and arguably deserved to have a better record than 4-2 after they soundly defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday night.
However, they traveled to Columbus and played one of the single worst games of the Auston Matthews Era.
The team, under new coach Craig Berube, looks a lot like the team recently coached by Sheldon Keefe, only with Chris Tanev in the lineup. Tanev has been a revelation, but all of the problems we foresaw in the summer continue to plague the Leafs.
They don’t have enough NHL centres, their lineup is deep by name-brand standards, but with John Tavares on the 3rd line, the Core Four looks more like the Core Three and the team lacks star power.
Tyler Bertuzzi wasn’t replaced, and we are seeing Berube going back to some of the things Keefe had already given up on (Domi at centre, Matthews and Marner paired together).
Already we can see the team doesn’t perform against weak opponents, and their stars have a tendency to turn invisible at times. Was depth scoring addressed? Not with the fourth line being an offensive black-hole it wasn’t.
On the bright side, Tanev – when he’s not risking injury – has been amazing, as has Anthony Stolarz, who has helped keep the disastrous injury to Joseph Woll from being a bigger deal.
Here are out thoughts on the team after we have played almost nine percent (!) of the 2024-25 NHL schedule.