Max Domi needs his opportunities replaced with accountability

Max Domi has played with seven organizations over his 11 year career, and only twice has made it to a third year with a team. His first club, the Arizona Coyotes held onto him for three seasons and he played 222 games for them and now, with the Toronto Maple Leafs, he’s just 38 games away from playing more hockey for the Leafs than any other club, all while having his lowest points per game output with Toronto than any organization he stuck with for more than 20 regular season games. Given that there isn’t much to Domi’s game beyond offence and his results in Toronto have been the worst of his career, it seems like a good time to once again ask, “why is he still here?”

When answering why Max Domi is with the Leafs the five answers are fairly straight forward:

1. His contract isn’t easy to buy out, trade or bury.
2. The illusion that he provides centre depth.
3. You can easily point to half a roster of forwards with equally bad offensive outputs.
4. His departure would mean Brad Treliving having to eat crow when the team’s record is already bringing some heat
5. The family name and his place in the locker room.

None of these are great reasons, but the volume of them is why not only has it been difficult to see the Leafs parting ways with Max Domi but why he’s been surprisingly immune to healthy scratches despite being on a 21-game goalless streak and having just 8 assists over that stretch.

Almost impossibly, this is the fourth time during Domi’s run with the Maple Leafs that he’s gone over 20 games without a goal. He started off going goalless in his first 21 games as a Maple Leaf, and twice had 26 game goalless streaks as well.

Projecting Domi’s current 31 game, three goal, nine assist output over the remainder of the season and rounding up the results, Max will nearly mirror his underwhelming results from 2024-25, coming in just under his 74GP-8G-25A-33P season with 81GP-8G-24A-32P.

The results aren’t for a lack of quality linemates either. Other than Knies and Nylander, no one has played more on Auston Matthews’ wing other than Max Domi. The trade off of going from a 100-point winger with Marner to a 30-point winger in Domi seems to be taking a toll on Matthews at 5v5 (who is also seeing his possession metrics suffer with Domi) and it isn’t coming with any increased offence from Max.

When Domi wasn’t been with Matthews and Knies, he’s been given offensive players to work with. Nick Robertson and Bobby McMann have been the next most frequent linemates while Domi was required to play centre and while they could string together a few games, the combination of too many hot/cold players without secondary aspects to their game has fizzled as well.

The sheltering aspect of Domi should be one of the biggest concerns. He can’t play with the Tavares and Nylander line because of the 200 foot risk of having that trio together against tougher competition, and when sheltering Domi the results have been inconsistent and still often result in Domi getting pinned in the Leafs own end and having it go poorly and providing the Leafs with limited flyby offensive attempts that quickly go the other way.

With Laughton healthy, Joshua figuring things out, Cowan adjusting to the NHL, and players like McMann and Robertson already outperforming Domi offensively, the level of accommodating that a struggling 30-year-old forward should receive needs to be scrutinized a bit more, especially since this is now year three of underwhelming results.

What seemingly sets Domi apart from other underperformers is that the Leafs have constantly shown the need for centre depth and that Domi’s willingness to shove people after the whistle has endeared himself to Berube and Treliving. Without those pieces of Domi’s game he is essentially an older Matias Maccelli. And while giving Maccelli a further look or even bringing Jarnkrok into the lineup more regularly may make sense, the Leafs might also want to consider the benefits of taking a prolonged look at Jacob Quillan in the lineup or bring Travis Boyd back into the league to see if he can be a bottom six fit.

Who would replace Domi on the Matthews line is a bit of an irrelevant question given that aside from Nylander there isn’t a player capable of taking on the role. Whether it is Domi, Laughton, Robertson, Maccelli, Cowan, Jarnkrok, or whomever, the Leafs roster is light on players who would make a difference there and placeholders are the only option.

Longer term, the Leafs need to start considering what their exit strategy is with Max Domi. His $3.75M AAV contract isn’t particularly moveable and when it comes with two additional seasons and a 13-team no trade list, a change of scenery trade would result in the Leafs getting back an equally disappointing return. There is too much history with Domi for anyone to think that they are going to fix him.

The bonus structure of Domi’s deal makes buying him out after the season a bad idea. The Leafs would still have two years of a $2.75M cap hit followed by a couple of $500k hits. The Leafs don’t need that extra $1M space that badly.

The Leafs retaining salary on Domi in a trade might make it possible to move on from him. It’s still hard to imagine the Leafs would get anything in return, but only having two years of dead cap space vs. four is a plus and would at most be $1.875M.

The other option is to waive Max. There won’t be a claim, but his salary buried in the AHL would only cost the Leafs $2.6M and they would still have him available as a depth centre option.

All of these steps are premature given that the Leafs still haven’t warmed up to the idea of even regularly scratching Max Domi from their lineup yet.

The bar for Domi to be a success in Toronto needs to be consistency because it does seem like as his back gets up against the wall and repercussions will finally occur, he’ll string together a couple of strong games before going into hibernation again. The Leafs have now gone five games from his five assist in three game stretch, a stretch that was preceded by six pointless games.

Domi isn’t alone in his results. Nick Robertson is on a cold streak, Matias Maccelli hasn’t figured it out as a Leaf and both Bobby McMann and Dakota Joshua aren’t immune from this criticism either. The Leafs can’t bench/trade/waive/buyout everyone, but Domi, as a longer term Leaf with higher expectations needs to be shown the same level of accountability.