Maple Leafs Opening Night Roster: The Last Two Spots Are Stecher and the 13th Forward

The Maple Leafs opening night roster is nearly set, with two real fights left

With the exhibition schedule finished and a 5 p.m. ET deadline on Sept. 28 to submit a cap-compliant 23-man list, the Maple Leafs opening night roster is down to two genuinely undecided jobs: the sixth defenceman, and the 13th forward. Everything else has been settled by lineup sheets, waiver placements and the simple arithmetic of who dressed in the games that counted for evaluation.

Both remaining decisions are more interesting than the usual last-spot filler, because both involve a player the club could lose if it guesses wrong and both are entangled with an injury that has not resolved.

The sixth defenceman: Stecher, Andrae, Blankenburg

Toronto opened camp with 25 defencemen in the building. It closes with three players realistically competing for one lineup spot and one press-box job: Troy Stecher, Emil Andrae and Nick Blankenburg.

Stecher had the best night of the three in the pre-season game where all of them were being measured directly against each other, logging over 21 minutes, leading clean breakouts and defending competently. He is the known quantity — a right shot, a veteran, and a player who has done this job before for this organization.

Andrae's case is different. He is younger, more mobile, and better with the puck, and he spent time paired with Morgan Rielly in the main group earlier in camp, which is not where a club parks a seventh defenceman. Blankenburg arrived on a professional tryout and played his way from ninth on the depth chart into the conversation, which is the whole point of a PTO and rarely actually happens.

Our read

Stecher plays game one and Andrae is the seventh, with the order reversing within a month. That is not a knock on Stecher. It is an acknowledgement that a coaching staff in the first week of a season reaches for the familiar player and only later reaches for the better one.

The complicating factor is handedness. The top four appears to be Rielly with Darren Raddysh and Jake McCabe with Chris Tanev, and Hiller has signalled he wants the Rielly-Raddysh pair getting heavy offensive-zone starts. That deployment leaves the third pair eating a disproportionate share of defensive-zone work, which argues for the steadier option rather than the more skilled one. Stecher fits that description.

Why the seventh defenceman job matters more than it used to

An 84-game schedule is two games longer than last season, and the new collective bargaining agreement that took effect Sept. 16 did not add rest days to compensate. Over a full year, the seventh defenceman on a team with an ageing top four is not a spare part. He is a player who dresses 25 to 35 times.

Toronto's blue line carries specific durability questions. Chris Tanev's game is built on shot blocking and defensive-zone punishment, and he needed clearance to start camp at all. Morgan Rielly has been the subject of trade speculation all summer, which has no bearing on his health but does mean the club has quietly considered what life without him looks like. Oliver Ekman-Larsson is 35.

Which is to say the choice between Stecher and Andrae is not really about one lineup card. It is about which player the organization wants absorbing 30 games of injury replacement in a season where it will almost certainly need somebody to.

The argument for Andrae that we find persuasive

If you believe the third pair is going to be sheltered anyway — and with Rielly and Raddysh taking offensive-zone starts, somebody has to eat the defensive ones, but a competent fourth line can absorb a lot of that — then the puck-moving upgrade is worth more than the veteran floor. Andrae's ability to exit the zone cleanly reduces the number of defensive-zone shifts the pair plays in the first place.

That is a second-order argument, and second-order arguments lose to first-order ones in the last week of September. We expect Stecher. We would not be upset to be wrong.

The 13th forward: Groulx by default, or by decision?

Bo Groulx moved up to the NHL group earlier this week when Dakota Joshua went down, and he is the presumptive 13th forward. The reason this is not simply settled is that Joshua's core muscle injury is day-to-day, and day-to-day on Sept. 24 with a Sept. 29 opener means nobody knows.

Here is the bind. Groulx requires waivers to be assigned to the Marlies and would be at meaningful risk of a claim given what he did last season at both levels. Easton Cowan is waiver exempt and can be moved freely. So the cap-efficient sequencing is obvious: keep Groulx, send Cowan down, recall Cowan when a spot opens.

The developmental logic points the other way. Cowan has been one of the best players in this camp by consensus — Hiller called him a puck hound, which is the kind of unprompted coaching compliment that usually means somebody has earned minutes. Sitting him in the press box as a 13th forward would be worse for him than 20 minutes a night on the Marlies' top line, but so would being buried in the NHL as an extra.

The version we would run

Send Cowan to the Marlies for two to three weeks, keep Groulx as the 13th forward, and recall Cowan the moment there is a real role for him rather than a seat. That is the sequencing that preserves both assets, and it is almost certainly what happens if Joshua is healthy.

If Joshua is not healthy, Groulx plays, Cowan still goes down, and the question gets asked again in mid-October when Joshua returns. Either way, the club does not have to expose anyone it values this week.

What is already decided

The forward group's top nine has not moved in ten days: Matthew Knies with Auston Matthews and Jack Roslovic; Gavin McKenna with John Tavares and William Nylander; a third line built around offseason additions Nick Paul and Colton Sissons. Teddy Blueger and Brandon Duhaime anchor the fourth line.

The defence is Rielly, Raddysh, McCabe, Tanev and Oliver Ekman-Larsson, plus whichever of Stecher or Andrae wins the last spot. In net it is Sergei Bobrovsky and Anthony Stolarz, with Artur Akhtyamov having earned a real look with the main group as the emergency option behind them.

The cuts have already happened. Twenty-five players were reassigned or returned to junior alongside the placement of Dakota Mermis and Cole McWard on waivers, following an earlier round that brought the camp roster to 32.

The cap constraint nobody can ignore

Toronto has been carrying commitments above the $104 million ceiling all summer, legal under the ten per cent offseason grace and not legal on Sept. 28. Compliance runs through Max Domi's long-term injured reserve placement plus one or two Marlies assignments, a path we broke down in detail here.

What that means in practice: the difference between two roughly equivalent players can come down to a cap hit gap of a few hundred thousand dollars, because every dollar of space matters when the club is operating with LTIR relief rather than genuine room. This is not a hypothetical. It is the most common reason a fan-favourite camp performer starts the season in the AHL.

It is also an argument for keeping the cheapest capable body in the 13th forward slot and using the savings as in-season flexibility. Toronto's full cap picture is on our contracts page.

What's next

Any remaining player who requires waivers has to be exposed by Sunday to clear in time. The roster gets submitted Monday at 5 p.m. ET. Montreal comes to Scotiabank Arena on Tuesday for the seventh straight season opener between these two clubs.

Our expectation: Stecher and Groulx are the last two names on the list, Cowan and Andrae start in the press box or Toronto, and both decisions get revisited before Halloween. Follow it on our players page and standings.