What does a successful 2024-25 season look like for Ryan Reaves?

Where do you start when talking about Ryan Reaves? The 3-year contract for a player over 35 years old was a head scratcher from the beginning. The fact that the deal carries an annual cap hit of $1.35M is even more crazy and made it impossible for a lot of Leafs fans to view Ryan Reaves as the fun loving, hard hitting enforcer that he was intended to be. Maybe as the salary cap continues to climb fans will be able to divorce themselves from contracts when looking at players, but Reaves as an expensive alternative to Kyle Clifford was always a bizarre choice.

If part of the locker room issue that Brad Treliving saw with the Maple Leafs or was communicated to him by other Leafs front officer staff was entitlement and players not feeling obligated to live up to their contracts, paying a mercenary premium to bring in Ryan Reaves to fix that was a bizarre choice. There was a lot of talk about how Reaves is someone who could bring the Leafs room together and end the divide, but I’m not sure how successful a player can be in that role when their performance was keeping them out of the lineup throughout the start of the year.

Reaves’ injury might have been the reset he needed. The fact that Reaves remained very close to the team and was present throughout his rehab showed that he is that “locker room glue guy” and his reputation for caring about the team is well earned. His absence also allowed him to hit reset on his dismissal start that seemed to result in the Leafs getting scored on every time Reaves set foot on the ice.

Reaves came back, scored a couple of memorable goals, won some fights, and threw enough hits in the second half of the season that he had adequately satisfied a lot of his critics that he was worthy of being in the starting lineup for the playoffs.

The playoff usage seemed to be a bad idea, but somehow Reaves still landed in five games throughout the Boston series. While he averaged just over 8 minutes a night in the regular season, he was under 8 minutes a night in the playoffs, and with no Bruins players willing to engage in his antics, the plug was pulled on Reaves for the final two games of the series and that should have raised a question about his future in Toronto.

It’s now training camp time and Reaves is still here, so the question becomes what can reasonably be asked of Reaves and what does a good season with Reaves look like?

The expectation- Ryan Reaves and David Kampf don’t play together

This seems like the bare minimum for both players as this duo was terrible together. Ryan Reaves has nothing to add to Kampf’s defensive hockey and neutral zone slow down game and his regular decision to step out of position to finish a hit makes it tougher for his fellow linemates to cover the zone. That being said, if Ryan Reaves isn’t doing that, what do you have him for? The Leafs need to put Reaves with players that are going to encourage that environment and the addition of Connor Dewar last season was a step in that direction. If Steven Lorentz is successful in his pro tryout with the Leafs, he might be another strong option of someone who would fit style wise with Reaves.

Some of the challenges with Reaves are that he was not a player you’d associate with Sheldon Keefe’s system at all. He was always going to be a square peg that would be wedged into a round hole, but Keefe was too reliant on having Reaves on a regular line playing a regular shift for as long as he could into a game instead of just utilizing Reaves a guy to go out and make trouble at key points in the game and rest one of his other wingers in the process.

You have to go back to Craig Berube’s first season as a Head Coach in Philadelphia to find the last time he was regularly deploying enforcers. Zac Rinaldo was an aggressive option for Berube in 2013-14, but his penalty minutes were cut in half the following year. Additionally, Berube had Wayne Simmonds in his lineup at that time and did not lean on him as an enforcer either. Berube’s time in St. Louis had plenty of disciplined phyiscal play, but an absence of excessive penalty minutes and no enforcers. Despite who Berube was as a player, it is possible that there isn’t a place in the lineup for Reaves unless he can take on role that embraces Reaves’ hitting more than his fighting and doesn’t hinder the play in the process.

The goal- Reaves finds his fit

Setting a goal for Ryan Reaves is a challenge. He’s going to hit and fight and be an important part of the locker room event planning squad, but I guess the goal is for all of that to show some benefit to the Leafs. Reaves isn’t going to magically pot 10+ goals or become a shot suppressor. He’s going to do what he’s been doing all along and if that can’t become useful under Craig Berube. If Reaves doesn’t look like he’ll be part of the Leafs plans the team needs to find a way to move on from him.

The Leafs have brought in Colton Orr, Matt Martin, and now Ryan Reaves and the result has often been similar. The eight minutes of hitting and fighting they provide doesn’t produce a ripple effect through the roster. It wasn’t that the Leafs had Tie Domi in the early 2000s that made them a tough team, it was that the Maple Leafs coach was Pat Quinn. That’s not to say that Ryan Reaves can’t also be a late career version of Tie Domi for Toronto, it’s just that it might not be necessary and the toughness that people seek in the Leafs lineup is going to start with Berube not an enforcer.