After a breakout season that saw him become the team’s first-line leftwinger, Michael Bunting isn’t about to get too comfortable with his role.
MILTON, Ont. — It is without much debate that the most successful newcomer to the Toronto Maple Leafs last season was Michael Bunting.
Signed to a two-year, $1.9 million contract in the summer of 2021, the Scarborough native collected 23 goals and 63 points in 79 games and he successfully grabbed the vacant first-line left winger position in November after Nick Ritchie (now with the Arizona Coyotes) failed to secure the spot.
No longer the new kid at camp, Bunting is not about to ditch the chip-on-the shoulder mentality that helped him on his long road to the big leagues.
“It took me a while to get to the NHL and I know how hard it is to get there but it’s just as easy to get out of the NHL,” Bunting said at the team’s annual golf tournament. “I want to stay here and I want to prove that last year wasn’t a fluke.”
Drafted in the fourth round (117th overall) by the Arizona Coyotes in 2014, it took until the 2018-19 season for the 5-foot-11, 197-pound Bunting to get his shot in the NHL. He scored one goal in five games and didn’t come back to to the NHL level until the 2021 season. That when’s he was on Toronto’s radar after he notched 10 goals in 21 games and helped Canada win gold at the 2021 World Championship.
And while Bunting will continue to keep the proverbial chip on his shoulder, he’s become one of the more valuable pending free agents heading into next summer. He established a firm chemistry with Auston Matthews, both on and off the ice.
Matthews invited Bunting along with fellow line mate Mitch Marner to train and hang out for a week in Arizona, further showing the bond the trio have recently formed.
“Hanging out with those guys was a lot of fun,” Bunting said. “Hopefully we can keep rolling with that and if we’re playing with each other (again) hopefully we can keep building off that.”
When Bunting signed last year, both he and Leafs GM Kyle Dubas admitted that he took a bit of a hometown discount to play with the Blue and White. Now into the final year of his contract, it may make sense to get the forward locked up to an extension before the season begins, as identical year could potentially drive his price up even further.
He says he hasn’t concerned himself with where things stand between him and the Maple Leafs, and lets his agent, Paul Capizzano, handle that portion of things.
Did we see the best Michael Bunting during the playoffs?
Bunting missed the final stretch of the regular reason with an apparent leg injury that also forced him to miss Game 1 of the playoffs. He returned for Game 2 but has since admitted he wasn’t 100 per cent.
“With that injury I probably would have been out a bit longer, but it’s playoffs,’ Bunting said. “When you get into the game you just put that injury on the back burner. I felt I tried my hardest out there, it was just unfortunate I got hurt when I did.”