The Toronto Maple Leafs and their fans are waiting on the edge of their seats for Chris Tanev’s return to the lineup.
The Maple Leafs’ headlining signing of the offseason has been a massive part of this team’s defensive corps in 2024-25, and we’ve seen up close just how valuable he is. After leaving a game against the Boston Bruins on February 25 with an injury, the team has gone 3-2-1 since, prior to Thursday’s game against the Florida Panthers. You would expect a slight dip when a team loses one of their most relied-on defencemen, but it’s more the way they’ve been losing games rather than the losses themselves. The Leafs allowed three goals or more in all but one of those six games, and they’ve blown a lead in three of their last four games. These are bad habits from previous seasons that have been mostly subdued in 2024-25, with the Leafs actually carrying a record of 27-0-0 when leading after two periods going into their 3-2 shootout loss to the San Jose Sharks.
Missing Tanev, the player, is a huge part of this; there’s no doubt about that. We’re talking about a player who eats up more penalty kill minutes than anyone else on the team and is top-five on the team in ice time at even strength as well. He’s top-five in the league in blocked shots, leading the Maple Leafs in that category by 39, and he’s formed arguably the best shutdown pair this team has seen in recent memory with Jake McCabe. The Maple Leafs received a ton of credit early on in the season for their commitment to team defence, and although it’s slipped a little bit since the calendar flipped to 2025, Tanev was a huge part of that success, and we’re seeing up close how hard the team struggles defensively without him.
As much as they miss Tanev and yearn for his return, getting him back solves more than one issue. For one, it gives them back their ever-so-reliable pair of Tanev and McCabe. In 475 minutes of time-on-ice together so far this season, the McCabe-Tanev pair has a high danger chance ratio of 78-65, which is currently the only regular Leafs defensive pairing with more high danger chances-for than chances-against. They’ve generated 205 scoring chances as opposed to allowing 185, and their expected-goals (xG) percentage is the highest of any active Leafs D-pair at 50.18%. Between the amount this pair controls the game at even strength and how much they bolster the team while shorthanded, they’re clearly missing their most dependable player.
Getting Tanev back also allows them to push Oliver Ekman-Larsson lower in the lineup, and this isn’t a slight toward Ekman-Larsson either. He’s just best-suited in a third-pair role on the regular with the ability to jump into the top-4 if necessary, as opposed to playing there all the time. That’s what made him so successful when he was with the Florida Panthers, and that’s likely the role general manager Brad Treliving envisioned him in when he signed him to a four-year contract in the summer. OEL’s best numbers of the season have, unsurprisingly, come playing alongside Tanev, but after that, he’s seen the most success playing alongside Conor Timmins, who was lower in the lineup. With Timmins, the two defencemen out-chanced teams 63-47 and carried an xG rating of 58.39%. Timmins is no longer a Maple Leaf, as we know, which would likely leave either Philippe Myers or, barring a health miracle, Jani Hakanpaa on his right side.
Finally, and arguably most importantly, it will spell the end of the Simon Benoit-Philippe Myers pairing. For a couple of players who are both better off as seventh defencemen or, at most, a complementary No.6, putting them together on the bottom pair is a recipe for disaster in the playoffs. In 27 games and 98 minutes played together, two players have surrendered 37 scoring chances compared to generating 28, and they have a ghastly xG% of just 33.49%. Both players have shown that they can play competent hockey when paired with somebody better, but they don’t make each other better when they play together. The Leafs acquired Brandon Carlo from the Boston Bruins while Tanev was injured, so when he comes back, the Leafs will no longer have to use both Benoit and Myers, which is the ideal outcome for the team and both players.
The Leafs arguably have their best defensive corps since the first two months of 2020-21, when Jake Muzzin and Justin Holl turned into the modern-day Chris Pronger and Al MacInnis, and with Tanev expected to return for Thursday’s game after being activated from injured reserve, we’ll get to see how this team operates with everybody at full health. Things won’t be perfect all the time, but adding a legitimate top-4 defenceman like Carlo into the fold will take some weight off of Tanev’s shoulders and allow him to continue to prove why he’s still one of the league’s best defensive defencemen.
