Could Scott Laughton, Steven Lorentz, and Easton Cowan be the Maple Leafs’ 4th line to start the season?

The Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Montreal Canadiens 7-2 on Thursday night with many of their NHL regulars missing from the lineup. As a result, players like Scott Laughton, Steven Lorentz, and Matias Maccelli got the majority of the top assignments. The player with perhaps the biggest opportunity in front of him was Easton Cowan, who skated alongside Laughton and Lorentz on the top line in what was his third straight preseason appearance. The result? A nice, modest eight points combined between those three players.

Scott Laughton led the pack with two goals and two assists, Lorentz picked up two goals and an assist, and Cowan grabbed an assist as well. Not only did the former two players lead the charge offensively, they also logged heavy minutes on the penalty kill, which is to be expected when the regular season gets underway. Cowan, meanwhile, getting these opportunities is significant because it shows that head coach Craig Berube is impressed with what he’s seen so far and wants to see what he’s capable of with players who will be regular NHLers. Now, giving your first-round pick top prospect fourth line minutes in the NHL instead of letting him get his feet wet in the AHL with top-line minutes doesn’t seem ideal at first, but so far, Cowan has shown that he can be effective even if not in a top-9 role.

“We were just on the same page,” Steven Lorentz told media following the game when asked what worked for his line. “I think we talked about it this morning after the skate how we’ve kinda found that chemistry. Even Cowboy [Cowan] has done a great job of riding along with us, he’s been contributing just as much as Laughton and I. He’s fishing pucks out of corners, he’s going into those dirty areas, that, you know, a skilled player might not always do that. So, that little feistiness he’s got in his game is so huge.”

Lorentz already has that chemistry with Laughton, having played the entirety of the playoff run on a line with him, but he told reporters that the two have made a point to let Cowan know he was doing a great job riding shotgun with them.

“We just told him to keep doing what you’re doing, and we were rewarded for it tonight.”

When you look at the Leafs’ forward group this season, the outlook is much different than it’s been in previous years. They might not be as top heavy, but their bottom-six seems much better equipped to play the matchup game and take some pressure off of the top players. Nicolas Roy and Dakota Joshua seem destined to play on the third line together and make life hard for opposing teams’ top lines, and when you factor in somebody like Max Domi potentially skating with those two, you’ve got some peskiness and offensive upside that previous Leafs shutdown lines haven’t necessarily had.

Then you’ve got Laughton, who has shown the ability to flirt with 20 goals and can jump into the top-six when needed, Lorentz, who matched his career high in points with 18 last season, and Cowan, who is playing with more confidence than ever before and has the offensive instincts that come with a first-round pick. For all the concern over losing a 100-point winger on the top line, the bottom-six is no longer a rotating cast of characters and seem far more likely to form an identity, something that’s plagued the Leafs in the past. Even if Cowan isn’t getting 15 minutes a night, his minutes are more likely to come against opposing fourth lines, which bodes well for everybody on that line and could give him some potentially easy matchups to feast on.

Berube reaffirmed his confidence in Cowan following the win in Montreal.

“They’ve got good chemistry, I think Cowan’s fit in really well with them,” Berube told reporters. “He understands the game well, they just grind teams down, they work it down low, they were rewarded by just putting pucks on net, they go in and off people, but it’s a pretty simple brand of hockey they play.”

It’s important to remember that Cowan’s preseason performance is not a direct indicator of what he’ll do in the regular season when he’s facing every team’s A-squad. Nick Robertson is picture proof of that after scoring five goals in three preseason games last season. But, the early confidence in not only his skill but his ability to play a checking game, go into the corners and retrieve pucks for his linemates is a good sign for his chances to make the team out of training camp. If he ends up needing more fine-tuning in the AHL, so be it, but so far he’s made a great case to start the season with Laughton and Lorentz on the fourth line.