Call us crazy, but in the initial days, we’ve seen the 2025-26 Toronto Maple Leafs have a different aura.
No more are the tense, bordering-on-seething media interactions that were the hallmark of the Core Four/Mitch Marner/Brendan Shanahan Era before he was traded to the Vegas Golden Knights a handful of weeks ago. No more questions about the long-term future of star Maple Leafs players. No pins and needles.
Indeed, it already looks and feels like a new era in Toronto, and everybody from players to coaches to management seems refreshed and comfortable with what they’re being asked to achieve this season.
Already this year, we’ve seen Leafs coach Craig Berube doing multiple interviews and speaking confidently about his team’s chance to do something special. Superstar Auston Matthews pronounced himself healthy, and he talked about the team’s players needing “to elevate and carry a bigger load.”
Meanwhile, Toronto goalies Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll know they’ll be one of the more competitive tandems in the NHL. And everybody knows their role, from the well-paid stars doing the heavy lifting to the foot soldiers and worker bees on the fourth line of forwards and third pairing on ‘D.’
It’s all adding up to a season that will answer a question – namely, was Marner the scapegoat some believe he’s been made out to be, or did moving on from him lead to the Leafs being a better, more well-balanced team? By the end of the year, we’ll have a good answer in that regard.
Regardless, you can’t deny the fact that this feels like a refreshed Leafs vibe.
Despite their untimely playoff defeat at the hands of the Stanley Cup-champion Florida Panthers, the Maple Leafs were still regular-season Atlantic Division winners in 2024-25. You get to have at least a little swagger when you’ve clubbed it out over a punishing 82-game schedule and emerged as the most consistently productive team in an ultra-competitive division. That was no small feat for Toronto, and although it will be challenging to return to the No. 1 spot in the Atlantic without Marner, there’s still plenty to like about this Leafs team.
Times change, people change and eras change. Sometimes, the changing of an era is subtle and nuanced, and you barely notice the change has happened. But there's now a lot of sunlight for other talented players to shine in.
And for Toronto, the team concept will be truer in Leafs Land. There probably won’t be many blowout Leafs wins, and there will be less of a reliance on any single player to carry the Buds through thick and thin.
'I Don't Have To Hear Core Four Anymore': Craig Berube Excited Mitch Marner’s Departure Puts More Focus On Maple Leafs' Team
<a href="https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/toronto-maple-leafs/it-hurts-right-now-craig-berube-urges-maple-leafs-to-remember-playoff-disappointment-pins-game-7-loss-on-structure">Craig Berube</a> is itching to see where players fit in the Toronto Maple Leafs’ lineup with the NHL camp set to begin on Wednesday.
Ultimately, Toronto’s depth and balance are what management is hanging its hat on. GM Brad Treliving has assembled a group of big-bodied players, a group of above-average third-and-fourth-liners, a terrifically balanced defense corps and a core of high-end elite talent that doesn’t need any catchy nicknames anymore.
“I don't have to hear ‘Core Four’ anymore,” Berube told reporters Wednesday. “Hopefully, I don't have to hear it from you guys the whole season.”
As the 2025-26 season is set to begin, the Maple Leafs are set to prove that last season was no four-man show and that Toronto’s post-season achievements this coming year are going to be markedly better than they were last season. Every team should have confidence at this time of year, but some teams’ confidence is more earned than others, and the Leafs have earned the right to feel right there in the thick of things in the division and Eastern Conference.
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