Dakota Joshua Returns in Vancouver as Leafs Trade Talk Builds

Dakota Joshua is back, and so is the trade talk

Dakota Joshua is expected to make his 2026-27 season debut for the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday, Oct. 31, against the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena, and he arrives with two jobs. The first is obvious: give a beaten-up forward group some size and bite on the third line. The second is quieter. Days before he was activated, NHL insider David Pagnotta reported that Toronto is trying to move him to clear cap space, which makes the next few weeks a showcase as much as a comeback.

Joshua, 30, has not played an NHL game since last season. An abdominal (core muscle) injury he carried through the summer kept him out of training camp, and the Leafs placed him on long-term injured reserve on Sept. 30. He finished an LTIR conditioning loan with the AHL's Toronto Marlies, where he went pointless in four games, and the Leafs activated him on Wednesday, Oct. 28. He practised with the team in Vancouver on Friday.

LeafsLurker's view: the return is good news, and the trade report is not a contradiction. Toronto should play him, let him look like the 195-hit forward it traded for, and then use his $3.25 million as the salary that makes a defence trade work. What the Leafs should not do is pay a team to take him.

How Toronto made room for Dakota Joshua

Activating a player from LTIR is a cap event, not just a roster one. Joshua's $3.25 million cap hit had been off Toronto's books while he was on LTIR, and it had to fit again before he could dress. The Leafs did that by moving Miles Wood from regular injured reserve to LTIR on the same day, Oct. 28, per The Hockey News' David Alter. Wood, who came from Columbus in the Kirill Marchenko trade, has been out with an undisclosed injury since Oct. 15.

That solved the cap but not the roster count. With Joshua active, Toronto was at the 23-man maximum, so the club placed Marchenko on injured reserve. Marchenko was hurt in the 5-2 loss in Calgary on Oct. 26 and is listed as week-to-week with a lower-body injury. We covered what his absence costs the lineup in our Kirill Marchenko injury breakdown.

The moves, in order:

The full sheet, including every LTIR and buried figure, is on our Maple Leafs contracts page.

Where Joshua fits in the Leafs lineup

Friday's practice in Vancouver gave the clearest picture of how head coach Jim Hiller plans to use him. The Athletic's Joshua Kloke posted the lines, and Joshua skated on the left side of a third line with Colton Sissons and Vinni Lettieri. Chris Tanev, out since Oct. 10 with an upper-body injury, skated with Morgan Rielly and said afterward that signs pointed to him playing. Anthony Stolarz is expected to start in goal.

Here are the forward lines from Friday's practice, per Kloke:

That third line has a clear identity: heavy, forechecking, hard to play against. Sissons was signed to be exactly that kind of centre, and Joshua was at his best in Vancouver doing the dirty work around the net. For a team that has given up five goals in each of its last two games, a line that can spend shifts in the other team's end without taking risks is worth something.

It also pushes Groulx out of the lineup and adds size to a forward group that has lost Marchenko, Wood and, since mid-October, John Tavares, who was not on Friday's practice lines.

What Dakota Joshua gave Toronto last season

The Leafs acquired Joshua from Vancouver on July 17, 2025, for a 2028 fourth-round pick. It was a cap move for the Canucks, who had signed him to a four-year, $13 million extension in June 2024 and needed room. Toronto took on the full $3.25 million cap hit, which runs through 2027-28. There is a bit of history here too: the Leafs originally drafted Joshua in the fifth round, 128th overall, in 2014, and traded his rights to St. Louis in 2019 without him ever playing a game for them.

His first Leafs season was interrupted. He suffered a lacerated kidney on a hit into the boards in Detroit on Dec. 28 and missed about two months. He finished with 10 goals and 18 points in 55 games, with 195 hits, averaging about 12:15 a night in a bottom-six role.

That is a useful third-liner at a slightly high price. It is not a problem contract. The problem is the team around it.

The Dakota Joshua trade report, and why it makes sense

Pagnotta, speaking on The Fourth Period's Off the Roster show in the days before the activation, said there is not much room for Joshua in Toronto and that the Leafs need to free up cap space both this season and next. Other outlets have since repeated that Toronto is shopping him. No reporter has named a team in talks, and Toronto has not commented.

The logic is plain. General manager John Chayka has said publicly that he is open to another big trade, and the hole he keeps circling is on defence. We laid out that thinking in our look at Chayka's trade plans. Toronto has no spare cap room to absorb a real top-four defenceman's salary. Somebody's money has to go the other way, and a $3.25 million winger who now sits third on the depth chart at his position is the cleanest candidate.

There are two complications. The first is the clause: Joshua has a modified no-trade clause that reportedly lists 12 teams he can block. That shrinks the market, though it leaves most of the league open. The second is term. His deal runs one more season after this one, so an acquiring team takes on $6.5 million in total commitment, not a rental.

Our take: use him in a bigger deal, never as a salary dump

The worst version of this is the one Leafs fans have seen before: a useful depth player attached to a draft pick just to make his salary disappear. Toronto should not do that here. Toronto's own 2027 first-round pick already belongs to Boston from the Brandon Carlo trade, and Chayka sent a conditional 2027 second to Columbus in the Marchenko deal. Every pick he uses to dump salary is one he cannot use for a defenceman.

The smarter path is to treat Joshua's contract as a matching piece. Teams adding a defenceman's salary to a deadline-style deal need money coming back to stay compliant, and a physical forward with one more year of term is a reasonable thing to take back. That is the deal to wait for.

Which brings it back to Saturday. If Joshua looks healthy, hits people, and helps that Sissons line hold its own, his trade value goes up, not down. The best thing for him and for Toronto is the same: play well, right away.

What's next for Joshua and the Leafs

Saturday's game closes a western trip that has gone 1-2 so far, after a 7-2 win in Edmonton and losses in Calgary and Seattle. Toronto is 7-6-2 and Vancouver has the worst record in the league, which we covered in our Maple Leafs vs. Canucks preview. The Leafs then come home to host the Utah Mammoth on Tuesday, Nov. 3, the start of a November that, per the published schedule, is heavy on home dates.

Watch three things over the next two weeks. First, whether Joshua's line keeps its spot when Tavares and Marchenko are healthy. Second, whether Toronto's cap math changes again once Wood comes off LTIR, since Toronto cannot have both players' cap hits counting without room. Third, whether a defence trade actually materializes. If it does, expect Joshua's name in it. You can follow the race in the Atlantic on our standings page.