The Toronto Maple Leafs have their two final preseason games tonight in a split squad matchup against the Ottawa Senators. They will have a home and away game, that will have good combination of NHL and AHL players, similar to their first two games against the Montreal Canadiens on this past Saturday night.
There’s something genuinely wholesome about watching a young player right before their first NHL game. And the Toronto Maple Leafs Gavin McKenna is giving us exactly that.
During a condensed training camp, the Toronto Maple Leafs will play their final, concurrent split-squad preseason games on Wednesday. Maple Leafs head coach Jim Hiller is overseeing the main group at Scotiabank Arena while John Gruden will coach Toronto’s de facto B squad in Ottawa.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are heading into what they hope will be a 2026-27 season of redemption. After a brutal 2025-26 season that saw them miss the playoffs, they need a fresh start.
The NHL has had an interesting new millennium. It was a league sans a salary cap when the 2000s started… and then the owners locked the players out for an entire season.
Gavin McKenna’s NHL debut is one that the majority of the hockey world will be tuning in for, and the fact that it’s for the Toronto Maple Leafs makes it all the more surreal.
The Toronto Maple Leafs were a mess last season. Thirty-two wins. Seventy-eight points. A team that spent far too much time looking like it was gripping the stick with both hands and waiting for something bad to happen.
Preseason’s underway, and the Toronto Maple Leafs’ split-squad games against Montreal were a little sobering. But before fans panic, I want to explain why this team might be better positioned than people think in the Atlantic.
The Maple Leafs’ split-squad preseason rosters are now available for their games against the Senators in Ottawa and Toronto. In the final exhibition warmup, the Leafs’ NHL opening-night lineup, except for their fourth-line forwards, will dress in Toronto.
People will talk about the “Mount Rushmore” for a franchise, which is to say the four people, usually four players, that most define the franchise. Not always the four-best players, but the four that evoke the essence of the franchise.
Ottawa Senators @ Maple Leafs & Maple Leafs @ Ottawa Senators 7:00 pm at Scotiabank Arena and Canadian Tire Centre Watch on SN1 for the home game and TSN 4,5 and NHLN for the away game Leafs region fans should find the TSN game (the away game) on TSN4, Ottawa region on TSN 5, and this is the game also on NHLN in the USA.
New Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky is all business, and it was on full display following Tuesday’s practice. If it wasn’t obvious by all the stories about his heavy-duty training regimen, the veteran Russian netminder takes his job exceptionally seriously.
Despite establishing himself as an indispensable, scoring, physical force on a team-friendly contract, the Toronto Maple Leafs shocked many NHL observers by allowing Matthew Knies' name to swirl prominently in offseason trade talk.
The Toronto Maple Leafs lineup-building has a certain logic, and it’s easy to see. Familiarity matters. Players know where they’re supposed to be; they know who they’re playing with, and coaches don’t have to spend the first month of the season reinventing the wheel.
Entering the 2026-27 season, NHL teams are well aware that the schedule format had been changed for the upcoming year. Teams will be playing an 84-game schedule for the regular season, up from 82 in previous years.
The Toronto Maple Leafs acquired defenceman Emil Andrae from the Philadelphia Flyers this offseason in what was general manager John Chayka’s first bold trade, moving off a fan favourite.
The Toronto Maple Leafs stunned many of their fans earlier this offseason when they announced that former Ottawa Senators captain Daniel Alfredsson, who had served the last several seasons with their divisional rival as an assistant coach, was transferring to their side of the Battle of Ontario.
Some former Maple Leafs players are easy to forget once they leave town. Dennis Hildeby probably shouldn't be one of them. Hildeby gets his first preseason start with the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday against Nashville.
The Toronto Maple Leafs have spent most of the summer changing their look, but the defence might not need to be overthought. At least, not yet. But how should the team set up its pairings?
Something funny happens with young defencemen in Toronto. We see a prospect have a good camp or a good preseason game, and immediately start wondering when he’ll be wearing the blue and white for real.
Mentally, it was a tumultuous summer for the longest serving Toronto Maple Leafs player – Morgan Rielly – who was the centre of trade speculation in the midst of a roster overhaul for the team under John Chayka.
The Toronto Maple Leafs’ vibes weren’t quite right entering the 2025-26 season. They couldn’t be when the previous campaign ended with an embarrassing Game 7 home loss to the Florida Panthers in Round 2 of the playoffs and cemented Mitch Marner’s departure from his hometown franchise.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are just over a week away from dropping the puck on their 2026-27 season, and they might already be down one of their regular skaters for their season opener.
There is a pretty easy way to look at the Matthew Knies story this season. He scored 66 points in 79 games for the Toronto Maple Leafs last year. He is healthy again.
As training camps wind down and the preseason gets underway, the area feels a renewed sense of energy, with the hope that teams that missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs a season ago will return this season.