Jack Roslovic is back on Auston Matthews’ wing in Toronto, but he's also navigating the traffic of a new city while being a brand new dad
Jack Roslovic has already lived the big-city version of this. He spent time in Manhattan with the New York Rangers and drove out to Tarrytown for practice. Traffic, he figured, was something you eventually just accepted.
Then he got to Toronto.
“It’s been good, yeah. It’s been fun,” Roslovic told The Hockey News on Wednesday following his first day of on-ice training camp sessions with the Toronto Maple Leafs. “Traffic getting used to, but besides that, it’s nice.”
For someone who lived and worked in New York, that was quite the claim.
“Honestly, it might be worse here.”
That is the smaller piece of the puzzle. The larger one is that Roslovic is trying to settle into a Maple Leafs team that has been completely rebuilt around him while he is also settling into something he has kept mostly private: fatherhood.
Three weeks ago, the 29-year-old , who signed a two-year, $8 million contract with Toronto this summer, became a dad for the first time. A baby boy named ‘River’.
“Yeah, no, I mean, I just had a kid,” he said, almost as an afterthought, when I asked what he likes to do away from the rink and whether those hobbies have travelled with him.
Roslovic is not a player who puts his personal life on the table. He did here, briefly, then circled back to the only thing that makes the calendar make sense right now. New city. New team. New coach. New supporting cast. And, on Thursday at the Ford Performance Centre, a familiar face on his left: Auston Matthews, with Matthew Knies on the other wing.
That look was not a surprise. On media day Wednesday, Matthews made the reunion sound less like a transaction and more like a continuation. The two played together with the U.S. National Team Development Program in 2014-15. They stayed close. They had already been skating together for a couple of weeks.
“I’m really excited to play with him again,” Matthews said. “We’ve definitely stayed in touch and stayed pretty close over the years. Hanging out with him and seeing him again, he’s a lot of fun to be around, he’s funny and he’s always got something to say. He’s a chattier guy which is great in the locker room so I’m excited to rekindle that chemistry with him… Hopefully it’s as seamless as possible.”
Roslovic heard that “chatty” label and did not fight it. Off the ice, he said, he is definitely chatty. He enjoys being at the rink. He enjoys hanging around the guys. On the ice, that same running conversation is useful.
“You get what you want out of each other,” he said. “With open dialogue, things are never a question.”
Meeting people, initiating, talking. Tthat part of the game he enjoys.
“Talking to people, seeing what they have to say. So it’s all part of the game.”
That is the version of Roslovic Matthews wanted in the room. It is also the version Toronto is asking to produce next to a captain whose season could decide how much of this reset actually works.
Matthews is healthy after the knee injury that ended 2025-26. He is talking like a player who intends to be here. He is also coming off a year that was nowhere near the Rocket Richard standard he set when he scored 60 and then 69. A lot of what is new in Toronto, Jim Hiller behind the bench, John Chayka’s roster, Sergei Bobrovsky in goal, Gavin McKenna on another line, Roslovic on this one. still hinges on Matthews looking like that player again.
Roslovic knows the clock is short. Hiller has been preaching one day at a time. Camp is compressed. The games are close.
“He’s learning. All the new guys are learning. All the core guys that have been here forever are learning,” Roslovic said. “You’ve got to figure out a way to take your time with it. But also at the same time, we’ve got to supercharge some of that, especially with the shorter camp. And the sprint starts now, so we have to be ready when the gun goes off at the starting line.”
What has stood out in the informal skates is not a system diagram. It is the faces.
“I think for the core group of guys, it’s nice to really have a good new supporting cast that everyone’s hungry too,” he said. “The push around the team is there, which the coach can’t do at all. So it’s internally players, internally, too.”
Reuniting with Matthews is the headline because it is the easiest story. The off-ice part matters to Roslovic as much as the on-ice one.
“Being able to have fun outside the room, inside the locker room. I think it’s important for your health,” he said. “On the ice, I think it’s just having a familiar face to talk to, conversations that not many people could have. You kind of know how he ticks a little bit. Obviously, it’s been a while, but asking questions, what I want from him and what he wants from me. Having an open dialogue helps clear a lot of our area.”
The rest of the adjustment is quieter. He is close to home enough that people can visit. He is interested in the restaurants. He has not felt the full “people change once you become a dad” shift yet.
River is three weeks old. Training camp is underway. Matthews is on his left, Knies is on the other side, and Toronto’s season will lean on whether that line, and that captain, can look like the version everyone remembers.
Roslovic is trying to get used to the traffic, both on the roads and in his professional and personal life.
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