The Toronto Maple Leafs will be putting a longstanding question to the test in 2023-24.
For years, the Toronto Maple Leafs used a “studs and duds” philosophy in spending their allotted salary cap money, and despite that, they still managed to be among the NHL’s deepest teams.
Now that they are nowhere close to that, it will be interesting to see if 4 x star players is alone enough to make them into contenders.
I think it will, but their depth is putrid.
Their bottom-six goes from having Ryan O’Reilly, Noah Acciairi and Matthew Knies (which was a legitimately scary 3rd line) to dressing 6 x replacement players.