As the Maple Leafs head into the 2025-26 regular season, many have focused on changes they’ve made to their group of forwards. And that’s definitely something to keep an eye on, all season long.
However, one of the two areas the Leafs haven’t touched is their defense corps, and their goaltending. Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll have made for a great tandem, and equally importantly, Toronto’s defensemen have proven to be a solid group that doesn’t need to be messed around with.
Leafs GM Brad Treliving has kept his blueline intact this summer, despite some calls for the Buds to acquire a puck-moving veteran D-man who can be a dynamo on offense. To which, we’d say, “Find us an experienced defenseman that a team is willing to part with, and at an affordable trade price.” You won't find one, as when you do look at who could be available – and when you see how little trade capital the Leafs have at the moment – you’ll understand why Treliving hasn’t touched his group of defensemen.
But maybe there’s more to it than that. Maybe Treliving is rather enamored with his defense corps. And maybe, just maybe, Treliving is right to feel that way.
It’s true the Maple Leafs had the fewest goals by defensemen last season, and they were 27th in points from their D-men last year. So it's reasonable that some critics want to see the Leafs acquire more firepower from the blueline. But Treliving may opt for a more clearly defined set of goals for his different position players. The forwards? They do the heavy lifting on offense, straight and simple. The defense? They don’t get scored on, and any offensive contributions they make after that are pure gravy.
So no, to be competitive, the Leafs don’t necessarily need buckets of points from veterans like Chris Tanev and Jake McCabe, or, for that matter, from players who’ve earned great reputations in Morgan Rielly and Oliver Ekman-Larsson. And they don’t need a Norris Trophy-esque performance from Brandon Carlo in his first full year as a Leaf. Last, but not least, they certainly don't need to trade a big-bodied, low-cost, physical defenseman in Simon Benoit, who deserves (and will get) a full column all to himself sometime soon.
Thus, this is the group of blueliners who are going to start the year as Leafs. It would be a good thing if Toronto gets a bounce-back season from Rielly, who dropped 17 points from 2023-24 to 2024-25, and who had a roller-coaster playoff in both zones. But Ekman-Larsson hasn’t produced more than 30 points in a season since 2018-19. Like the rest of the Leafs' defense, Ekman-Larsson pretty much is who he is. And betting that Treliving is somehow going to acquire a slick blueliner without creating a giant hole elsewhere in the organization is dreaming in technicolor.
The lack of offense from Toronto’s back end wasn’t the reason the Leafs lost to the Florida Panthers in seven games of the second round of the playoffs. They lost because they came up flat at the worst time in a Game 7 blowout, and they lost because they had no punch on offense that could punish the Panthers for daring to move into the Leafs’ zone. The defense surely isn’t blameless for the Game 7 loss, but Treliving has kept them together because he has faith in them to be at least as good as they were last year.
With all Leafs defensemen returning for the 2025-26 campaign, Toronto’s fans should take a breather and give the defense corps a chance. They’re not green in the gills, they all know their roles, and they all have a decent amount of experience in high-stakes situations. Leafs brass have re-committed to the Buds' defensemen, and the results could be a smashing success. And re-investing in the same group of D-men may prove to be a management masterstroke.
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