Maple Leafs are slow, Auston Matthews has to step up, and Chinakhov shouldn’t be a trade target: Leaflets

As the highs of Blue Jays baseball exit the Toronto landscape in November the Maple Leafs are in for a rude awakening. If you’ve been following hockey out of the corner of your eye, a 5-5-1 start falls into that “sweet spot” of being underwhelming but not overly concerning. You can look at the Panthers, Lightning, and Oilers as other slow out the gate teams that will eventually figure it out, but the Panthers can count on getting Matthew Tkachuk back, they might get Barkov back for the playoffs, and the Oilers are days away from Zach Hyman boosting their offence. The Lightning…well, maybe they are in a similar situation to the Leafs and if that is the case MLSE needs to be ready at a moment’s notice to throw a bag of money at Jon Cooper in the event they do the ultimate stupid thing.

If there was a point to that preamble, it’s probably that the Leafs look worse than their record. The only teams they’ve played that were in the playoffs last season were the Canadiens and Devils, and they’ve fallen this flat against underwhelming competition. That should be a concern.

Slow and steady wins the draft lottery

Okay, so maybe speed isn’t everything but the Leafs getting slower than they have in a long time doesn’t seem ideal. According to the NHL Edge stats website the Leafs are presently 19th in the league when it comes to 22+ mph speed bursts. They are 27th speed bursts between 20-22 mph, and 27th in speed bursts between 18-20 mph. To put a bow on this narrative, it seems like the Leafs have been coasting this year.

The Leafs haven’t exactly been speed demons the past couple of seasons either, falling in the middle of the league as opposed to the top 10 or even top 5 status they enjoyed in the first couple of years of NHL Edge tracking. You could argue that they are either chasing the puck less, playing better positionally, or are more comfortable stripping their opponents of the puck as possible reasons why speed doesn’t matter, but those interpretations don’t fully align with what our eyes tell us either.

The Leafs are older, and speed disappears with age. Morgan Rielly is a prime example of a player who has seen their speed disappear in the past couple of seasons and last year it was a true hindrance, especially when coupled with Rielly being closed to make safer passes which further slowed down the Leafs puck movement.

The Leafs haven’t done much to account for their loss of speed. Of their players with speed bursts over 22+ mph this year only William Nylander and Jake McCabe have done so in the 30+ year old group, while Bobby McMann, Simon Benoit, and Nick Robertson are the only others, with McMann and Benoit being the closest thing to regular high speed burst options on the Leafs.

Much like with the limitations on Rielly’s passing last season, the Leafs having a quick puck mover like Marner gone further slows down the team and makes them easier to play against. Which whether speed is the priority for the Leafs or not, the absence of speed from their game is one more thing that makes them a more beatable opponent.

Teams can win without speed, but the question is whether or not the Leafs are built to be one of those teams.

Auston Matthews’ slow start

5 goals in 11 games doesn’t look alarming until you remember who it is and 7 goals is the target for Matthews to be a 50 goal guy in an 82 game season. Matthews could easily score a hat trick on Saturday and all is right in the world, but right now health, lack of Marner, and $13.4M AAV contract hang over his head and worth noting he is yet to combine statistical success with the captaincy.

It seems like up until last season the mindset around Matthews has always been, “the Maple Leafs are lucky to have this generational (or near generational) talent in their lineup” and marveling at both his offensive ability and his responsibility in his own zone always made it seem like Matthews in a Leafs uniform was a dream.

The splash of cold water is that Matthews is coming off his worst offensive season last year. He’s never been a playoff performer and the past couple of seasons have been particularly bad. A slow start in 2025-26 comes with a fresh set of worries and the absence of long time collaborator Mitch Marner and the struggle to find the right fit on Matthews line is part of that.

Putting a healthy William Nylander next to Auston should give the Leafs a boost, the Leafs have a clear need for a consistent top six performer, and even elite players are allowed slow starts to the season, but in a year where the Leafs were asking everyone to step up, their captain hasn’t been one of the players doing so.

Yegor Chinakhov is not the answer

Who is looking at this team and saying they need more Nick Robertsons?

That’s not to say that Nick Robertson has been bad, in fact the past couple of games you can point to Robertson as a bright spot. The question is more about when it comes to the Maple Leafs top six forward needs, is the solution a player who maybe has the chance to become one if the change of scenery strategy works, and assuming Chinakhov is what he is, would a streaky secondary scorer who plays around ten minutes a night a fit on a team that already has Matias Maccelli, Max Domi, Nick Robertson, Bobby McMann, and Dakota Joshua giving very similar results.

Chinakhov is slightly bigger than Robertson. His numbers are slightly better than Robertson’s. Size doesn’t really matter in this situation as Chinakhov doesn’t have any interest in being a physical player. You’d likely get more physicality out of Robertson. You’d probably get better skating out of Robertson.

Chinakhov’s higher cap hit, plus the fact that the Blue Jackets don’t seem interested in a one for one swap involving Robertson raises the question of why the Leafs are even considering him as a trade target. Much like the moves involving Scott Laughton, Joel Edmundson, and others, this feels like Brad Treliving is setting the bar too low and “making an educated wish” on a player stepping up their game on the Maple Leafs.