Maple Leafs News & Rumours: Hiller, McKenna, Roslovic, Cowan, Rielly & Marlies Fates

Something feels a little different about the way the Toronto Maple Leafs are starting training camp this year. Usually, September is about sorting things out. Veterans get their legs back, prospects get a look, coaches move players around, and everybody spends a couple of weeks figuring out what the team might look like when the real games begin.

That isn’t quite what is happening in Toronto this time around. The camp is shorter, the coaching staff is new, the roster has changed considerably, and the regular season is coming up fast. Jim Hiller and John Chayka seem to have decided there’s little point in pretending they have all kinds of time. They want their NHL players together, working together, and figuring things out as quickly as possible.

The interesting part isn’t simply that training camp is short. Hiller has basically acknowledged that the Maple Leafs deliberately put many of their likely NHL players together right away because there isn’t enough time to ease everybody into things. With new coaches, new players, and a new management group, Toronto has to build familiarity quickly.

This contrasts with the traditional September camp. Instead of spending several days mixing veterans and prospects and gradually putting the pieces together, Hiller wants his core players competing against one another immediately. His observation that working hard against each other is also a form of team bonding makes a lot of sense. You can only build so much chemistry over dinners and golf games. At some point, players have to actually play hockey together.

And look at the names getting those early opportunities. John Tavares and William Nylander have been paired with Gavin McKenna, while Auston Matthews and Matthew Knies are working with Jack Roslovic. Easton Cowan is getting a look alongside Nick Paul and Colton Sissons. That doesn’t look much like a camp designed simply to see what everybody can do. It looks more like Hiller and Chayka are trying to get the team they expect to use into working order before the season arrives.

Another interesting story sits beneath all of this, and it has to do with the players who aren’t getting those prime opportunities. The American Hockey League (AHL) Calder Cup-winning Toronto Marlies might reasonably have expected their success to translate into a pretty good look at the NHL level this fall. Instead, Chayka spent the summer bringing in a collection of NHL-ready bottom-six forwards and additional defensive depth.

Benoit-Olivier Groulx, Toronto Marlies (John Mrakovcich/Hartford Wolf Pack)

That makes the road considerably tougher for players such as Jacob Quillan, Luke Haymes, Bo Groulx, Landon Sim, Vinni Lettieri, Michael Pezzetta and Ryan Tverberg. These are players who might have looked at the Marlies’ championship and thought they had earned a serious opportunity. Now they are competing against players who have already played a lot of NHL hockey. Zach MacEwen, for example, is currently with the secondary group, which shows how much competition there is for those jobs.

But this is also part of what Chayka appears to be building. The Maple Leafs aren’t simply leaving openings and hoping prospects grow into them. They have added experienced players who can fill specific roles, provide competition and give the organization some insurance when injuries inevitably arrive over an 84-game schedule. That may make the climb harder for the Marlies, but it also gives Toronto more options once the season gets going.

The defence is an interesting case, too. Ben Danford and Emil Andrae are getting prominent looks, while Nick Blankenburg has been given an opportunity and Morgan Rielly is still working his way back from his illness. Once Rielly is healthy, the picture changes again. That makes the next few weeks important for the young defencemen, because there simply won’t be unlimited opportunities once the veteran group is back together.

The next step is pretty simple, even if getting there won’t be. The team needs to turn all these new pieces into an actual hockey team. The exhibition games are coming quickly, and Hiller now has to start seeing whether the combinations that look interesting on a training-camp board actually work when somebody is trying to take the puck away from them.

That makes the early games worth watching for reasons that go beyond the final score. How quickly do the new players understand their roles? Does the Matthews line have some chemistry with Roslovic? What does McKenna look like beside Tavares and Nylander? Can Cowan make himself impossible to ignore? And on defence, can Danford or Andrae force the coaching staff to think twice before settling on the veteran group?

My guess is the most important part of this camp won’t be finding 23 players. Chayka has already done a lot of that work. Hiller’s bigger job is getting those players to understand how they are supposed to play together. With a short camp and a new-look roster, Toronto doesn’t have the luxury of spending October figuring that out. The figuring-out has already begun.