Maple Leafs Roster Cuts: 30 Sent to Marlies as Camp Trims to 32

Maple Leafs Roster Cuts: 30 Players to the Marlies, Camp Down to 32

The biggest round of Maple Leafs roster cuts of the 2026 preseason landed on Monday, when Toronto reassigned 30 players to the AHL’s Toronto Marlies and trimmed its training camp group to 32. It is the move that turns a 73-player camp into something resembling an NHL hockey team, and it happened one week before opening-night rosters are due on Sept. 28.

Twenty forwards went down: Brandon Baddock, Matthew Barbolini, Gunnarwolfe Fontaine, Luke Grainger, Luke Haymes, Reese Johnson, Marc Johnstone, Ben King, Ryan Kirwan, Braeden Kressler, Alex Nylander, Cedric Pare, Jacob Quillan, Nick Rheaume, Logan Shaw, Landon Sim, Marco Sikic, Sam Stevens, Ryan Tverberg and Borya Valis. Seven defencemen followed: Noah Chadwick, Ryan McCleary, Rhett Parsons, John Prokop, Chas Sharpe, Blake Smith and Cade Webber. Three goaltenders went with them: Keith Appleby, Artur Akhtyamov and Vyacheslav Peksa.

None of it is a surprise. All of it is informative, because what a team keeps tells you more than what it cuts.

Easton Cowan Survives, and That Is the Headline

The most important name on Monday’s list is the one that is not on it. Easton Cowan is still in the NHL group.

Cowan has been among the more visible forwards in camp — Hiller has publicly described him in terms that read like a coach who wants to play him, and he has been slotted in on a third line in most projections. A year ago Toronto famously left him off the opening-night roster before adding him back a day later. This time he has survived the largest cut of camp without drama.

That matters for reasons beyond sentiment. Cowan on the roster is a cheap, young, forechecking forward in a bottom six that Chayka spent real money rebuilding, and he is the natural beneficiary if Dakota Joshua is not ready for the opener. We looked at his case in detail when he emerged as one of camp’s genuine standouts, and Monday is the first hard evidence that the organization agrees.

The Goaltending Depth Chart Just Got Decided

Sending Akhtyamov down settles the third-goalie question in the least surprising way possible. Akhtyamov is the organization’s clear No. 3 and the Marlies’ presumed starter after a strong AHL playoff run, and the plan was always for him to play rather than sit in an NHL press box.

That leaves Sergei Bobrovsky and Anthony Stolarz as the NHL tandem, exactly as intended since Bobrovsky signed a three-year contract on July 1 and Joseph Woll was traded to Philadelphia on June 16. Samuel Hlavaj, the other summer addition in the crease, is the organizational depth piece we examined when he signed as effectively the fourth goalie.

It is a tidy resolution to a position that is anything but tidy. Toronto’s goaltending is the single biggest question on the roster, and the depth chart being settled does not make the projection less alarming — public models have Toronto’s crease as the worst input any team took on this summer.

Alex Nylander, Ryan Tverberg and the Waiver Math

A few names on the list carry more weight than a routine reassignment. Alex Nylander, brother of William, was in camp on a look and is now a Marlie. Ryan Tverberg has been on the NHL bubble for two seasons. Reese Johnson and Logan Shaw are veterans whose value is that they can be recalled without a roster crisis.

The relevant mechanic here is waivers. Players on entry-level contracts and those with limited professional games can be assigned freely; established veterans generally cannot, and a team that wants to keep them in the system has to expose them and hope 31 other clubs pass. Toronto has managed this successfully in past Septembers, but it is the reason a handful of these assignments will not be finalized until the waiver window clears.

For the fringe NHL forwards still in camp, the calculus is simple and brutal: there are perhaps two jobs open, one of which may only exist if Joshua starts the year on injured reserve.

How the Camp Got From 73 to 32

Toronto opened camp on Sept. 11 with 73 players — 41 forwards, 25 defencemen and seven goaltenders, one of the larger groups in the league and a deliberate choice by a new front office that wanted to see as many bodies as possible. We covered the initial roster when it was released, and the size of the defence group in particular was the most striking feature of Chayka’s first camp.

The first trims came after the NHL Prospect Challenge in Gatineau, when four junior-eligible players were returned to their clubs: Rylan Fellinger to Flint, Brody Pepoy to Saginaw, Patriks Plumins to Chicoutimi and Cooper Williams to Saskatoon. Four amateur tryout agreements were released at the same time: Sebastian Charvat, Matyas Man, Parker Vaughan and Nic Whitehead.

Monday’s 30 is the big one. What remains is 32 players for what will ultimately be a 23-man roster, which means roughly nine more decisions in the next week — most of them at the margins of the forward group and the third defence pair.

What Monday Did to the Marlies

The other half of a cut day is an AHL roster, and Toronto’s just got serious. The Marlies now have a returning goaltender in Akhtyamov who was among the best in the league last spring, a defence group built around Chadwick, Prokop, Webber and McCleary, and a forward corps deep enough in professional experience — Shaw, Johnson, Baddock, Pare — to give the young players cover rather than exposing them.

This matters more than usual for this organization. Chayka has restructured development and analytics since arriving in May, brought in new people to run player development, and has spoken about wanting information to move between the NHL club and the minor-league operation rather than the two running as separate businesses. The Marlies are supposed to be a functioning pipeline again, not a parking lot.

Ryan Tverberg and Jacob Quillan are the two names worth following there. Both are old enough that this season is a genuine referendum on whether they become NHL players, and both are the kind of cheap middle-six option a cap-tight team badly needs to develop internally over the next two years.

The 32 That Remain, By Position

Reporting on the surviving group puts it at roughly 16 forwards and 13 defencemen alongside the goaltenders — a distribution that tells you exactly where the competition still is. Sixteen forwards for 13 or 14 jobs is close to settled. Thirteen defencemen for seven or eight is not.

That imbalance is a hangover from a camp that opened with 25 defencemen. Chayka wanted options on the blue line, and he now has more of them than he can use. Nick Blankenburg is in on a professional tryout. Emil Andrae is in the mix. William Villeneuve is recovering from ACL surgery. Ben Danford, the 2024 first-round pick, has been skating with the Marlies group and faces the standard junior-versus-AHL question for a defenceman his age.

Somebody in that group is going to be a healthy scratch on opening night at a salary Toronto would rather spend elsewhere, and somebody else is going to be exposed to waivers. Neither outcome is a disaster. Both are the predictable consequence of hoarding defencemen in July.

Our Take

This is a normal, well-run cut. The interesting thing about it is how little drama there was, which is itself a signal. Chayka and Hiller appear to have made most of their decisions before the preseason games started, and the remaining competition is narrower than the 73-player camp implied.

The one call we would push back on is the size of the defence group Toronto is still carrying. Thirteen defencemen in a 32-player camp with eight days to go suggests the third pair is genuinely unresolved, and unresolved blue lines in late September have a way of becoming unresolved blue lines in December. If Hiller knows who his sixth defenceman is, he has not shown it.

What’s Next

Toronto has preseason games remaining against Ottawa before the Sept. 28 roster deadline and the Sept. 29 opener against Montreal at Scotiabank Arena. Expect at least one more round of assignments, plus any waiver claims, in the next several days. The final answers to watch are Cowan’s roster spot, the sixth defenceman, and whether Toronto needs an extra forward because of Joshua’s health.

For the deadline picture, see our breakdown of what Toronto still has to settle before Sept. 28. The full contract and cap accounting is on the contracts page, and the roster itself is tracked on the players page.