AHL: Toronto Marlies Roster Analysis – Top Forwards

The Toronto Marlies’ forward core has changed dramatically since the beginning of the 2024-25 season. They’re already a team that has struggled somewhat for offence, finishing last season with only 209 total goals – placing 20th in the AHL out of 32 teams, and they’ve also suffered the loss of some of their best scorers to free agency and trade. While they have new blood coming in, the team is largely young and fairly inexperienced professionally, and the road ahead of them is going to be an uphill one.

Who’s still around?

Of the team’s top ten highest-scoring forwards in the 2024-25 season, only four are still remaining on the team: captain Logan Shaw, Alex Nylander, Jacob Quillan, and Cedric Pare. The other six all departed for elsewhere:

• Alex Steeves’ contract expired, and he signed a one-year contract with the Boston Bruins. Steeves was the Marlies’ leading scorer by nearly 20 points, amassing 36 goals and 26 assists in 59 games with the Marlies.
• Nick Abruzzese’s contract expired, and he signed a one-year contract with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Abruzzese was the Marlies’ third-place scorer after Steeves and Nylander, with 15 goals and 28 assists for 43 points. He also played the most games out of any Marlie, with 71.
• Joseph Blandisi signed a two-year contract for SKA St. Petersburg of the KHL. He amassed 15 goals and 20 points in 58 games, and also led the Marlies in penalty minutes with 82.
• Roni Hirvonen, similarly, left North America to sign with Oulun Karpat in the Finnish Liiga. In 59 games, he scored 10 goals and notched 11 assists.
• Nikita Grebenkin was traded partway through the season to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, the AHL affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers, as part of the Maple Leafs’ trade for Scott Laughton. He had 9 goals and 12 assists for 21 points – the same as Hirvonen, but he accomplished the feat in only 39 games.
• Zach Solow signed a contract with Adler Mannheim of the DEL. He had 19 points in 52 games.

The losses of Steeves and Abruzzese, especially, will hit the Marlies hard; Steeves scored the most goals out of any Marlie by nearly a factor of one and a half, and Abruzzese was a steady player who only missed one game the whole season. For a team whose biggest problem last year was offence (they didn’t have quite the same struggle with preventing goals, finishing 10th in the league in goals against), having your leading goal-scorer depart is going to be a significant loss.

In the meantime, Quillan, Shaw, and Nylander will have to take over as the team’s most tenured top scorers. Nylander and Quillan both played games with the Maple Leafs last season when injuries necessitated call-ups, and Quillan, especially, is young and expected by Marlies coach John Gruden to graduate permanently at some point.