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Leafs fans should not give up on Morgan Rielly

Originally posted on 6IX ON ICE | By Anthony William | Last updated Jul 25, 2025 12:47 PM ET

The Toronto Maple Leafs are entering uncharted territory for the first time in nearly a decade. They are without superstar Mitch Marner, who the team drafted fourth overall in the 2015 NHL Draft. They also have cap flexibility, and assistant GM Brandon Pridham does not need to work his cap gymnastics to ensure the team is cap compliant.

As General Manager Brad Treliving continues to retool the roster ahead of training camp, a name that has come up in trade talks is Morgan Rielly. Some fans think that more of a culture change is needed to change the identity of the team, and trading the longest-tenured Leaf would be a good way to do it.

However, I think Leafs fans should not give up on Morgan Rielly just yet. I think Rielly has more to offer than what we saw last season.

A brief history

I think fans forget that Rielly has played for several bad Leafs teams, which has probably stunted his development. Rielly finished junior hockey with the Moose Jaw Warriors after being drafted by the Leafs in 2012. He entered the NHL immediately in the 2013–14 season at the age of 19.

The Leafs teams from the 2013–14 season through the 2015–16 season were not good teams. The Leafs finished 23rd, 27th, and 30th, respectively, in those seasons. Yet Rielly improved his goal and point totals each year. Obviously, when the Leafs drafted franchise centre Auston Matthews in 2016, things improved.

Rielly had his breakout year in the 2018–19 season, scoring 20 goals and 52 assists for 72 points in 82 games. He had such a fantastic season that he was in talks for winning the Norris at several points during the season. Ultimately, future Leaf Mark Giordano won the Norris that year.

In recent years, Rielly’s offensive game has dropped. However, this dip in production has been a function of who he has been paired with and his overall role. Throughout his career, he has been paired with a revolving door of defenders—some adequate and some poor. With the signing of right-handed defenceman Brandon Carlo, Rielly finally has a stable defence partner for the first time in his career.

Like in 2018–19, his defence partner, Ron Hainsey, allowed Rielly to play to his strengths. Rielly is at his best when he uses his skating to join the rush and focus on generating offence. He can use his skating to get back defensively after taking risks in the offensive zone. Where he struggles is trying to play as a stay–at–home defenceman, which is not his skillset.

With Carlo, Rielly will no longer be forced to play a more defensive game, nor have to carry his defence partner throughout the season. Rielly should be able to focus more on offence this upcoming season.

Playoff Mo

Even with the dip in offence, Riley has been known to show up in the playoffs. Let’s take a look at his last four playoff performances:

Table 1. Summary statistics showing Morgan Rielly’s games played, goals, assists and points by playoff season.

Playoff Season	Games Played	Goals	Assists	Points
2021–22	7	3	3	6
2022-23	11	4	8	12
2023–24	7	0	3	3
2024–25	13	4	3	7

Rielly is known more for setting up plays than scoring goals. Over his career, he has scored an average of seven goals per regular season. Excluding the 2023–24 season, Rielly has scored almost half or more than half of his regular season average in goals. This is impressive given that space becomes limited and more of a physical grind in the playoffs than the regular season.

This past playoffs saw a bit of a dip in performance in terms of total points. However, for reference, he scored the same number of goals against the Ottawa Senators and one more goal against the Florida Panthers than three-time Rocket Richard winner Auston Matthews. Now, this says more about Matthews than it does about Rielly. But comparatively, he is performing adequately.

Rielly, like William Nylander, seems to show that extra gear in the playoffs. However, like the rest of the team, it has not been enough. I am willing to bet that we haven’t seen the best of Rielly under new head coach Craig Berube.

Rielly notably had a hard time adjusting to Berube’s system last season, only scoring seven goals and 34 assists for 41 points in 82 games. Still, this was asking a player used to playing a certain way for eight years to change in one season. It’s not always that easy to adjust.

Locked-in

With so much talk in the media about the “pressure to play in Toronto” and how ex-Leafs like Ryan O’Reilly elected to sign in a quieter market, Rielly clearly wants to be a Leaf. There’s a reason why he signed a long-term, eight-year x $7.5M AAV contract with the Leafs in 2021. With Rielly’s contract, he has a full NMC, which then becomes a 10-team no-trade list in years seven and eight.

However, in the present moment, Rielly holds all the cards. He is heavily involved in the community, having been involved in several charities such as the Southlake Regional Cancer Centre’s “HERE is Where Cancer Meets Its Match” campaign. With a young family that includes a one-year-old baby, it is doubtful that he would waive his NMC.

If I had the option to move on from Rielly this offseason, either one-for-one or as part of a package for a bona fide offensive defenceman, then I would absolutely make that trade. We have seen enough to know that the current leadership does not work, and it’s time for a change. However, this is unlikely to happen.

That being said, with another training camp with Berube and the first with Carlo, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Rielly’s performance will improve this upcoming season. Either way, I think it’s more likely that Rielly has a bounce-back season, and we should embrace it as fans.

This article first appeared on 6IX ON ICE and was syndicated with permission.

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