The Darren Raddysh Power Play Case Starts With 115 Slap Shots

The Darren Raddysh power play argument starts with a number nobody expected

The most useful fact about the Darren Raddysh power play era in Toronto is not his contract, his age or his defensive reputation. It is that he fired 115 slap shots last season — a total flagged this week by Maple Leafs Hot Stove as the highest recorded by any NHL defenceman since Brent Burns also hit 115 in 2018-19. That is not a rounding-error stat. It is a description of an entire style of play, and it is the thing the Maple Leafs were actually buying.

Toronto's power play has needed a genuine trigger man on the blue line for two seasons. It has had puck-movers, distributors and quarterbacks. What it has not had since the unit's structure changed is a right-shot defenceman who treats the top of the umbrella as a shooting position rather than a passing lane. Raddysh, on the evidence of 2025-26, does exactly that, and he does it at a volume no other defenceman in the league approaches.

We have already argued that the eight-year, $68-million contract is a defensible gamble with a long tail. This is the narrower question: what does the shot volume actually buy in year one?

What Raddysh did in Tampa, in full

Raddysh's 2025-26 season was the sort of breakout that scrambles a market. In 73 games with the Tampa Bay Lightning he put up 22 goals and 48 assists for 70 points. Among NHL defencemen that was tied for third in goals, seventh in points, first in power-play goals with 10, tied for sixth in power-play points with 26, and fifth in shots on goal with 212. Fifty-five of those shots came on the man advantage. He also had six game-winners, second among defencemen.

The 22 goals set a Tampa Bay franchise record for a defenceman, passing marks held by Victor Hedman and Dan Boyle. He did it at 30 years old, in a contract year, on a team that already had an elite power play — which is the part that should give Leafs fans both hope and pause.

Chayka acquired his rights from Tampa in a June sign-and-trade for a 2026 fifth-round pick and immediately signed him to eight years at an $8.5-million cap hit, running from 2026-27 through 2033-34. Toronto paid the term because it could not pay in assets. That is the trade the front office made, and it is a real one.

Why shot volume is the specific thing Toronto lacked

Power plays fail in two ways. They fail to enter the zone cleanly, and they fail to convert possession into dangerous shots. Toronto's problem for the last two seasons has been overwhelmingly the second one. The unit could hold the puck. It struggled to make holding it cost anybody anything.

Mitch Marner's departure to Vegas in 2025 removed the player who made the whole structure move — the half-wall distributor who could hold the puck long enough to break a box open. What replaced him was more shooting talent and less manipulation. That combination only works if somebody up top is willing to shoot into traffic on a first look rather than reset for a better one.

That is Raddysh's entire value proposition. A defenceman who takes 55 power-play shots on goal in 73 games is not waiting for the perfect seam. He is generating rebounds, deflections and second chances, which is the sort of low-glamour offence that turns a mediocre unit into a good one. It also drags penalty killers up the ice, which opens the seams that Toronto's actual shooters live in.

The Gavin McKenna complication, and why it helps

The obvious question is who runs the unit. Gavin McKenna arrives as the No. 1 overall pick with a stated organizational expectation of first-unit power-play minutes from day one. Auston Matthews owns his office in the left circle. William Nylander does not need to be told where to stand.

None of that conflicts with Raddysh. It arguably requires him. The version of Toronto's power play that fails is the one where four skilled forwards pass the puck in a diamond until the penalty expires. A defenceman who shoots first changes the geometry: penalty killers cannot collapse to the slot if the point is a live threat, and Toronto's forwards are all better with an extra foot of space.

The realistic shape of PP1 is Matthews, Nylander, McKenna and one of Matthew Knies or John Tavares at the net front, with Raddysh at the top. That is a unit with a distributor, two elite finishers and a shooter behind them. Our projected lineup for 2026-27 lays out how the rest of the deployment falls into place.

Where the volume argument gets uncomfortable

Shot volume is not the same as shot quality, and slap shots from the point are among the least efficient shots in hockey on a per-attempt basis. The 115-slap-shot number is a description of Raddysh's tendencies, not proof they scale. Burns, the only comparable in recent memory, was a genuine outlier who paired that volume with elite mobility and a Norris Trophy résumé. Raddysh is not that, and pretending otherwise sets him up to fail against expectations he never set.

There is also the year-over-year risk. Twenty-two goals from a defenceman is the kind of season that tends to regress hard. Raddysh's shooting output in 2025-26 sat well above anything he had produced before, and he did it inside a Tampa system built around Hedman and a decade of power-play continuity. Toronto's supporting cast is talented but brand new to each other.

The defensive question has not gone away either. Raddysh's five-on-five results have historically leaned on strong partners, and Toronto's blue line remains, by the front office's own admission, unfinished. If Jim Hiller has to shelter him at even strength to protect the power-play value, the $8.5 million starts to feel like it is buying a specialist.

The honest bar for year one

Nobody should expect 22 goals again. The realistic target is 12 to 15 goals with 45 to 55 points, a power play that finishes in the league's top 10, and even-strength results that are not actively negative on a second pair. Hit that and the contract is fine. The volume — the 200-plus shots, the 50-plus on the man advantage — is the leading indicator to watch, because it is the input Raddysh controls and the one Toronto paid for.

The thing that makes this bet more defensible than it looks is that shot volume is one of the stickiest year-to-year traits in hockey. Shooting percentage bounces. Willingness to shoot does not. A player who launched 115 slap shots at 30 is very likely to launch a comparable number at 31, whatever the conversion rate does. Toronto bought a behaviour, not a hot streak, and behaviours travel.

Why this matters more against an 84-game schedule

The league's expansion to 84 games in 2026-27 adds two more games and, with them, roughly six more power plays across a season. That is marginal on its own. What is not marginal is that a longer season with a compressed preseason rewards teams whose special teams are simple and repeatable rather than dependent on chemistry that takes two months to build.

A shoot-first power play is the most repeatable kind. It does not require a rookie and a returning captain to read each other perfectly in October. It requires one player to keep doing the thing he already does, and four others to hunt rebounds. For a Toronto team that has to win early — the cap sheet gives Chayka very little slack, as the contracts page makes clear — that is a feature.

What's next

Raddysh will get first-unit power-play reps from the first day of camp; there is no version of this roster where he does not. The tell will come in the preseason and the opening weeks: whether Hiller runs him at the top of a 1-3-1 with McKenna on the wall, and whether Raddysh keeps shooting when the first three go wide.

Toronto opens at home against Montreal on September 29. The power play will get its first look that night, and the number to track is not goals. It is shot attempts from the point. If Raddysh is still firing in game 20 of a losing stretch, the Maple Leafs bought the right player. If he starts looking for the extra pass, they bought an expensive second-pair defenceman.