The Toronto Maple Leafs are outside of a playoff spot and aren't playing great hockey, but despite that, there's a clear path for them to turn around their season.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are in the midst of a critical six-game road swing, and although they have played better defensively since an embarrassing performance in Montreal last weekend, they have managed only mixed results and have the clock ticking on whether they can climb back into the Eastern Conference playoff race or accept that this is a lost season and that the club requires a reset.
The Leafs completed a span of three games in four nights surrounding American Thanksgiving, riding the superb goaltending of Joseph Woll in a 2-1 overtime victory in Columbus on Wednesday, getting another excellent performance between the pipes from Woll in Washington, but missing an opportunity to steal two points, as the Capitals rallied with two late goals and an empty-netter in a 4-2 victory on Black Friday, and bouncing back with a 7-2 rout of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The win improves Toronto’s record to .500 (11-11-3) and gets them to within four points of third place in the Atlantic Division and the second Eastern Conference playoff spot. In spite of the East standings being extremely tight, the Leafs have little room for error and cannot afford many mistakes, as well as inconsistent performances within the next month, or GM Brad Treliving will be forced to reconsider the direction of the club entering the second half.
Treliving has, to this point, not made any panic moves, limiting roster tweaks to claiming goalie Cayden Primeau, winger Sammy Blais, and defenseman Troy Stecher off waivers, and calling up injury replacements from the AHL Toronto Marlies. Despite consistent chatter that he has been putting out feelers to acquire possible help, the Leafs GM has been focused mostly on internally solving what has ailed his club.
"The reality in the business is that you are not trading your way out of problems," Treliving said earlier this month. "What you try to establish with your team is what it's going to look like on a nightly basis. When you're going well, you have a really good indication; there's going to be good nights and bad nights. But you have a pretty good idea how it's going to look from night to night."
"A large part of the frustration is you don't know how it's going to look, right? It's been in spurts, it's been in periods, it's been within periods. I think you can count on one hand how many full complete games we've had. So that's a big part of it, is going back to how we want to look and trying to get to look like that on a more consistent basis."
Toronto is limited in what they can do in the trade market, but unlike the last few years, when it was cap flexibility that held them back, this season, it is a lack of future assets to barter with. The Leafs dealt their 2026 first-rounder and center Fraser Minten in the deadline deal to acquire blueliner Brandon Carlo, their 2027 first-round pick and prospect Nikita Grebenkin for center Scott Laughton, and they have only three picks in the 2026 NHL draft.
Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported that Treliving is looking to make roster-for-roster moves to improve his club, but those types of moves only make sense while the Leafs are within realistic range of a playoff spot. Depending on where Toronto resides in the standings entering the second half, it is possible that the Leafs could transition to becoming limited sellers before the March 6 trade deadline to recoup some of those future assets.
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