Maple Leafs Bottom Six Pushed Montreal to OT. That Was the Point

The Maple Leafs bottom six outscored the top six by two goals on the same night

The Maple Leafs bottom six went to the Bell Centre on Saturday without Auston Matthews, William Nylander, John Tavares, Matthew Knies or Gavin McKenna, ran into a Montreal lineup carrying Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Ivan Demidov and Lane Hutson, and lost 4-3 in overtime. At the same hour in Toronto, the group with all the stars in it lost 4-1 and scored once.

Three goals against Montreal's best versus one goal against Montreal's second-best. That inversion is not a fluke to be laughed off, and it is not proof of anything either. What it is, is the clearest look Toronto has had at the six or seven roster spots that are genuinely unsettled with one pre-season night left on the schedule.

Henrik Rybinski had a goal and an assist. Colton Sissons scored in his first game as a Leaf. Marc Johnstone briefly put Toronto ahead. Artur Akhtyamov and Samuel Hlavaj split the net and each made 13 saves. For a group assembled almost entirely in July, that is a real night.

How the game went

Montreal took control early. Juraj Slafkovsky tipped one home at 4:27 of the first period, and Demidov made it 2-0 on the power play at 12:04. Two goals down inside 13 minutes against that group, with a Toronto lineup built around fourth-liners and prospects, is usually where an exhibition game goes quiet.

It did not. Rybinski scored on the power play at 3:56 of the second to make it 2-1. Sissons tied it at 8:32, deflecting an Oliver Ekman-Larsson shot from the point. Johnstone put Toronto in front 3-2 at 16:21. Three unanswered goals against Montreal's top-end lineup in a little more than 12 minutes.

Hutson dragged it back. He tied the game at 2:43 of the third and finished the night with a goal and two assists, which is the kind of line that reminds you why Montreal's blue line is going to be a problem in this division for a decade. Caufield ended it in overtime with 38 seconds left, finishing a two-on-none give-and-go with Hutson.

Colton Sissons and Nick Paul are the shape of Chayka's bottom six

Sissons' goal was almost a parody of what he was signed to do: get to the front of the net, get a stick on a point shot, go to the bench. That is the job. Toronto is paying him $4.25 million a season for a specific set of behaviours — penalty kill, faceoffs, net-front work, matchup minutes — and he did one of them in his first shift-count as a Maple Leaf.

The more interesting piece is the line he is attached to. Jim Hiller has talked openly about an Easton Cowan-Nick Paul-Sissons trio, framing it as a unit that should be able to handle the other team's best players while still pushing offensively. In a split-squad game in Montreal, that line was pointed at Suzuki and Caufield. It is the most specific thing Hiller has said about his lineup construction all camp.

Paul came over from Tampa Bay on July 1 for Dennis Hildeby, a 2027 fourth and a 2028 third, with three years left at a $3.15-million cap hit. He is 31, he is from Mississauga, and he is exactly the kind of player the old version of this roster kept trying to acquire at the deadline instead of in July. Whether that line holds up over 82 games is the question that decides whether Toronto's fourth line is a liability again.

Easton Cowan's audition is the one that matters most

Cowan is the player in this group whose season is genuinely undecided. He won a Calder Cup with the Marlies last spring, he was Hiller's stated standout on day one of camp, and he is being asked to prove he can play a checking role against elite competition rather than a scoring role against AHL competition.

Sending him to Montreal to face Suzuki's line rather than keeping him home for the showcase game is itself a message. The Leafs are not trying to inflate his confidence with soft minutes. They want to know whether he can survive against the best players in the Atlantic, because that is the version of Cowan that helps this team in 2026-27.

Nothing on the scoresheet settles it. But a 4-3 overtime result with that assignment is a better outcome than most projections would have given. Cowan's next real test comes on Sept. 23.

Henrik Rybinski is making the depth signings look smart

Rybinski was one of the July additions nobody wrote about — part of a batch of depth contracts aimed at giving the Marlies an actual roster and the Leafs a recall option that does not cost anything. He scored on the power play and set up another goal against an NHL lineup in his first look.

That does not put him on the opening-night roster. It does put him near the front of the recall queue in November when somebody gets hurt, which is the entire purpose of signing players like him. Toronto's organizational depth was thin enough last season that a single injury in the bottom six turned into a month of bad hockey.

Johnstone's goal belongs in the same category. Neither of these players is a 2026-27 solution. Both of them are the reason the 2026-27 solution does not fall apart in January.

The goaltending split behind them

Akhtyamov started and stopped 13 of 15. Hlavaj finished with 13 saves. Between them they gave up four goals to a lineup with Suzuki, Caufield, Demidov and Hutson in it, and one of those came in overtime on a two-on-none.

Akhtyamov is the goaltender Toronto is actually developing now that Woll is in Philadelphia and Hildeby is in Tampa. Hlavaj, fresh off an Olympic run, is the organization's fourth goalie by depth chart and its most experienced insurance policy. Both looked like they belonged.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, Sergei Bobrovsky and Anthony Stolarz split the crease in the opener, with Bobrovsky stopping 10 of 11 before handing off. The four goaltenders who dressed on Saturday represent basically the entire Leafs goaltending organization, and none of them had a bad night.

What's next

Toronto's final two pre-season games are both on Sept. 23 against Ottawa, one at Canadian Tire Centre and one at Scotiabank Arena. That is the last live evidence before the 23-man cap-compliant roster is due to the league at 5 p.m. ET on Sept. 28. The regular season opens Sept. 29 at home against Montreal.

Every unsettled question runs through that one night: whether Cowan opens in the NHL, whether Nick Blankenburg's PTO turns into a contract, who takes the seventh defenceman job, and how many bodies Toronto has to expose to waivers to get to 23. Max Domi is out indefinitely after failing his physical, which gives the Leafs LTIR flexibility they would rather not need.

One more observation from Saturday worth carrying forward: the depth group competed harder than the star group. Pre-season games are worth very little, and that particular signal is worth slightly more than the rest of it. See the full roster picture and cap breakdown for what Toronto still has to sort out this week.