Ben Danford and the Maple Leafs Blue Line: The Right-Shot Push Toronto Actually Needs

Ben Danford is quietly Toronto's most important defence prospect

Amid a summer of trades and free-agent headlines, the Maple Leafs have a homegrown answer to one of their thinnest positions sitting in plain sight. Ben Danford, the right-shot defenceman Toronto took 31st overall in the 2024 draft, turned pro this spring, joined the Marlies for their Calder Cup run, and has made no secret of his goal: he wants to make the Maple Leafs out of training camp. For a team that just traded away a right-shot mainstay and may lose another top-four defender before the season starts, Danford is not a feel-good sidebar. He might be a necessity.

The 6-foot-2 blueliner is not the flashiest name in the pipeline — that title belongs to Gavin McKenna and Easton Cowan — but he plays the position the Maple Leafs are shortest on. Right-shot defencemen who can defend, move the puck and kill penalties do not grow on trees, and Toronto's depth chart on the right side got noticeably thinner this offseason.

How the right side got thin

Start with the Brandon Carlo trade. When Chayka shipped Carlo to St. Louis for two third-round picks, the Maple Leafs moved a big, right-shot, shutdown defenceman who ate hard minutes. That was a deliberate choice — part of a broader reshaping of a defence that had grown expensive and slow — but it left a specific hole. Chris Tanev is the veteran right-shot anchor, and after him, the cupboard is short.

Now layer in the Morgan Rielly situation. Rielly's agent has submitted a list of Western-based teams, and while no deal is imminent, the sense around the league is that a trade is a matter of timing rather than possibility. Rielly is a left shot, but moving a top-pair defenceman still thins the group as a whole and pushes younger players up the depth chart. You can follow that saga on our tracker of the Rielly trade list and the teams in the mix. Add it up and there is a real opening on Toronto's back end for a young, cost-controlled right shot to seize.

What Danford brings

Danford is a defence-first, right-shot defenceman with size and a competitive edge — the archetype Toronto has spent years trying to acquire in trades and free agency. His game is built on gap control, physicality and clean first passes rather than highlight-reel rushes. That profile travels well to the NHL, where a rookie defender who keeps things simple and defends hard is far more likely to stick than one who tries to do too much.

His pro debut with the Marlies during their Calder Cup championship run matters here. Getting his first taste of men's hockey in a deep playoff push, against motivated professional competition, is exactly the kind of accelerated development Toronto wants from a first-round pick. Prospects who show up in the AHL playoffs tend to arrive at their first NHL camp with fewer nerves and a clearer sense of the pace.

The path to the roster is real, not sentimental

Danford has been direct about his intentions, telling Toronto radio that his goal going into camp is to put himself in the best possible spot — and that spot is the Maple Leafs, not the Marlies. That confidence is backed by the depth chart. Toronto's established right-shot options thin out quickly behind Tanev, and the club has every reason to give an entry-level defender a long look rather than pay a veteran on the open market to fill a third-pair role.

There is also a salary-cap logic to it. With the roster tight and Chayka keeping flexibility for an in-season addition, a young right-shot defender on an entry-level deal is exactly the kind of cheap, useful piece a contender-adjacent team wants. If Danford can handle sheltered minutes and a penalty-kill role as a rookie, he frees up cap space that would otherwise go to a replacement-level veteran. That is how smart teams build a bottom pairing.

Why the Chayka blueprint favours a kid like Danford

This is where Danford's timing meets Toronto's philosophy. Chayka's reputation is built on valuing cost-controlled contributors and cap efficiency over splashy veteran spending, and the front office overhaul this summer — which reshaped the analytics and development departments — points to a club that wants to trust its own evaluations. A right-shot defenceman drafted in the first round, developed in-house, and ready to contribute on an entry-level deal is the exact archetype that model is supposed to produce.

For years the Maple Leafs did the opposite on defence, importing right-shot help through trades that cost picks and prospects and often term. Carlo was one of those; so was the veteran depth that came and went. Breaking that cycle means actually playing the young defenders you draft instead of blocking them with signings. Danford is the first live test of whether the new regime will walk that talk, and a bottom-pairing role for him would be a small but real signal that the blueprint is more than a slogan.

The competition he has to beat

None of this is guaranteed. Danford still has to win a job at camp, and the Maple Leafs have other young defenders and depth signings competing for the same minutes. Coaches are historically cautious with rookie defencemen, and Hiller will want to see that Danford can handle NHL speed before trusting him against top-six forwards. The realistic outcome may be a split season — a stretch in the NHL, a reset with the Marlies, and a callup when injuries hit, which over an 84-game grind they inevitably will.

That path is not a failure; it is how most good defencemen are made. Very few blueliners step straight into a full NHL season at 20 or 21 and never look back. The healthier development arc is exactly what a split season provides: NHL reps to learn the pace, AHL minutes to keep playing big roles, and a front office patient enough to let the swings even out. If the Maple Leafs treat Danford's rookie year that way rather than demanding he be a finished product by October, both the player and the team come out ahead. The mistake would be rushing him into a role he is not ready for and then souring on him when the results wobble.

But the door is open in a way it rarely is in Toronto, where the blue line has usually been a place for expensive veterans rather than kids. Danford is the rare Leafs defence prospect with both the profile and the timing to force his way in. Compare his path to the rest of the group on our rundown of the top 10 Maple Leafs prospects.

What's next

The next checkpoint is main training camp in September, where Danford gets his first real audition against NHL competition. Watch his pairing in early preseason games — if the Maple Leafs slot him alongside a steady veteran and give him penalty-kill reps, that is a signal the coaching staff is serious about him making the team. Between now and then, the Rielly trade and any further defence moves will shape exactly how wide his opening is. Keep tabs on the full roster picture on our players page, and on the pipeline behind him via the draft and prospects hub. Toronto has spent years shopping for right-shot defence. The best option this fall might already be in the building.