The Toronto Maple Leafs are off to an admirable start in year two of Brad Treliving at the helm and year one of Craig Berube behind the bench. They currently sit atop the Atlantic Division with a record of 13-7-2, and despite dropping two points to the Florida Panthers on Wednesday night, they still hold the division lead by one point. Much of that can be credited to arguably the best start to a season from a goaltending tandem the team has seen in years, and the fact that they’ve banded together and played some tight hockey as a unit in the wake of Auston Matthews’ injury, going 7-2-0 in the nine games he’s been out for.
First place in the Atlantic Division or not, the Maple Leafs still have flaws that will eventually need to be addressed. Sometimes these flaws can be identified early in the season, and sometimes they take a little bit to expose themselves, but by the time the trade deadline rolls around, you typically have an idea of what your team needs to prioritize. This season, the team’s top need became obvious almost immediately, and arguably before the season even started. That need, of course, being a third-line centre.
It’s become increasingly obvious that the Leafs aren’t comfortable with having Max Domi down the middle long term. Pontus Holmberg had an opportunity to grab that spot this season but the offence simply hasn’t been there, despite the hard work that he’s put in this season. David Kampf has shown he can lead an effective checking line in the past, but he’s also provided minimal offence and needs a specific type of winger to thrive in that role, which he hasn’t had since the likes of Pierre Engvall and Ilya Mikheyev have been gone. Point being, the Leafs need an upgrade up the middle beyond Matthews and John Tavares. It might sound insane, but a reunion with the centre they acquired the year they won their only playoff round in the Matthews era. I’m talking, of course, about Stanley Cup and Conn Smythe winner Ryan O’Reilly.
On an episode of the JD Bunkis Podcast on Sportsnet 590 The Fan, The Athletic Maple Leafs contributor James Mirtle brought up a couple of names the Maple Leafs could target up the middle and said he doesn’t believe a reunion is out of the question.
“I don’t think the O’Reilly thing is 100% impossible. I don’t think that’s a pure dream scenario. I think it’s unlikely, I don’t think it’s 100% impossible,” Mirtle told Bunkis. “The front office still loves him. They tried to keep him. He doesn’t have a no-move or no-trade clause, Nashville has talked about potentially tearing it down, they’re in 31st place in the league, it’s not impossible.”
O’Reilly might not have thrilled fans with his departure for the Predators after the 2022-23 season, but he was objectively a huge part of their playoff run that year. He tallied 11 points in 13 regular season games and had nine points in 11 playoff games while playing all situations for the Maple Leafs. Power play, penalty kill, down by one looking to tie the game late, you name it. He was a dream piece to utilize down the stretch in the sense that you could play him at centre and give them three dangerous lines, or you could put him at second-line centre, put John Tavares on the wing, and all of a sudden you’ve got two elite lines if you’re desperate for offence.
While there was never any formal report that O’Reilly had any issues with then-head coach Sheldon Keefe, it’s not hard to connect the dots and come to the conclusion that O’Reilly would probably gel better with the man who was behind the bench when he won his Cup and Conn Smythe. O’Reilly left because he wanted more of an opportunity, and let’s be honest, who doesn’t love Nashville as a city? It makes sense, but just because that’s the conclusion he came to in the end, doesn’t mean he was happy with how things played out here. He joined Overdrive in June 2023 to talk about the end of the playoff run that year and said he felt the Maple Leafs could have done more to fend off the Panthers.
“I think playing against Florida and how they came out and played so loose and just physical that as we saw we kind of dug ourselves a hole quick and just didn’t respond the way we needed to there,” O’Reilly said. “And then Bob (Sergei Bobrovsky) gets hot and next thing you know we’re down two and not feeling great about ourselves. There are so many things we could have done differently, it’s frustrating. We could have given that series a better chance and that’s just the way the game goes sometimes”
Whether you think that’s an indictment on Keefe or the players around him, you can draw your own conclusions. But it’s completely fair to suggest that O’Reilly would probably fit into the circumstances of this year’s Leafs team better than last time. The team has a much more dependable defensive corps and they’ve gotten stellar goaltending from Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll to date. Their main issue this season has been their forward depth (that said, injuries don’t help that situation now), so there’s real potential that he could have the bigger role he was looking for last time around, especially with a coach that’s shown he won’t play his best players just to play them if they aren’t getting the job done.
Whether or not O’Reilly would be cheaper or more expensive to acquire this time around is up in the air. The 33-year-old got a very manageable contract for what he does, but the term (two more years after this season) and the fact that the Predators probably aren’t keen to blow it up considering how much they invested this past offseason likely won’t help the cause either. But considering the price it took to acquire O’Reilly and Noel Acciari last time around, which was a first-round pick and a C-level prospect in Mikhail Abramov, I’m inclined to believe the price wouldn’t be terribly different considering you’ve got the age factor to balance out the term aspect.
Either way, O’Reilly is absolutely somebody the Maple Leafs should have their eye on as they get closer to the trade deadline. Regardless of what the headlines might say about “why” he left, he has enough positives from his time there that a return shouldn’t be entirely out of the question.
“It was and is an amazing place to play. Just putting on that jersey, you can just feel the love that comes with it, how much pride people take in that jersey. It’s hockey’s team. … It was definitely not an easy decision not (to re-sign) there.”
