Nick Blankenburg heads to Toronto on a professional tryout, offering the Maple Leafs mobile blue-line insurance and high-energy depth as Chris Tanev continues to recover from surgery.
Nick Blankenburg has found his next stop — just not the one Colorado fans might have hoped for.
The undersized, hard-nosed defenseman who won over the Avalanche locker room down the stretch last season has signed a professional tryout contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs, as first reported by The Boston Globe's Kevin Paul Dupont.
The move is being read as a direct hedge against Chris Tanev's uncertain recovery, with new Leafs GM John Chayka reportedly eyeing Blankenburg as "small, but mobile" insurance while the veteran defenseman continues to await clearance from surgery he underwent in March. Tanev appeared in just 11 games last season before the injury, and his status for training camp remains up in the air.
It's a fitting next chapter for a player who spent much of last spring proving he belonged. Acquired by Colorado in March in exchange for a 2027 fifth-round pick, Blankenburg struggled to find his footing at first — overplaying his aggressiveness and occasionally getting caught out of position. But something shifted late in the year. He scored in back-to-back opportunities, then delivered the signature moment of his tenure: a backdoor finish off a Valeri Nichushkin feed in Colorado's Game 1 rout of Minnesota, with his parents watching from the stands.
Nathan MacKinnon and coach Jared Bednar both praised his competitiveness and offensive instincts, even as Bednar pushed for more consistency in when Blankenburg chose to jump into the rush versus staying home defensively.
That upside evidently caught Toronto's attention.
Across 61 games split between Nashville and Colorado, Blankenburg posted 24 points and showed real value on both special teams units — the kind of two-way profile that made it somewhat surprising he lasted this deep into the offseason without finding a permanent home.
Toronto currently sits at the league's 50-contract limit, so any path to a real, standard deal likely means moving a body first, whether that's a trade or reassigning a prospect overseas. For now, it's just a tryout — but if recent history with Leafs PTOs is any indication, it might not stay that way for long.
