Leafs taking on plenty of risk with free agency moves

The Toronto Maple Leafs had a busy summer, as they look to revamp the team and bounce back after missing the playoffs in the 2025-26 season. On top of drafting Gavin McKenna first overall, the Leafs added Darren Raddysh, Sergei Bobrovsky, Nick Paul, Jack Roslovic, Colton Sissons, Teddy Blueger, Brandon Duhaime and Emil Andrae to completely overhaul their crease, bottom six and blueline.

But while many are praising John Chayka’s first summer at the helm in Toronto, how much better did they actually get? Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton talked on Daily Faceoff Live about Toronto’s summer and the skepticism about the players they brought in.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Everyone’s loving John Chayka. I don’t think I’m in love with John Chayka and what he did yesterday. There’s a lot of action there. But I look at some of these deals as I wake up and I go, okay, Colton Sissons, who we like, we’re a pro-Colton Sissons show, I know that. But Colton Sissons at $4.25 million. You and I both had a similar reaction yesterday when we saw the money. Jack Roslovic at $4 million. He’s a bit of a magician in the regular season and then poof, he’s gone come playoff time. They bailed Tampa Bay out of the Nick Paul thing. They gave Brandon Duhaime $2.6 million, Teddy Blueger $2.5 million. I just felt like there were quite a bit of overpays here.

Again, Bobrovsky could work, but you traded away Joseph Woll and Dennis Hildeby and took a gamble on an injury-prone goalie in Stolarz and a 37, soon to be 38-year-old goalie who’s coming off one of his worst career seasons. Again, a lot of activity, but a lot of risk in Toronto.

Carter Hutton: 100%. Again, if you told me that you were going to have Bobrovsky and Stolarz play behind a D-core like Carolina or a D-core that’s absolutely stacked that can protect them and make it easy. But now you’re playing behind a D-core where it’s like, “hey, well, how do we fix the D-core here?” That’s like my biggest problem here. You just aged everybody out.

So Toronto, you add a bunch of good depth and you have some pieces. Again, you’re going to need Matthews, and the plan is if Gavin McKenna can step up and fit right into the league and be a difference maker, it helps you up front. You still have Morgan Rielly, you still have Chris Tanev, who is over the hill and constantly injured. Jake McCabe’s not getting any younger. He plays a tough game. That’s my big question mark, because last year that was the biggest thing that held the Leafs back.

You can watch the full episode here…