Maple Leafs Roster Has Two Preseason Games Left. Both Are Wednesday

The Maple Leafs roster gets decided in one night and five practices

The Maple Leafs roster that opens the 2026-27 season has to be submitted to the league by 5 p.m. ET on Sept. 28 — 23 players, cap compliant, with anyone requiring waivers already through the process. Between now and then, Toronto plays exactly two pre-season games, and both of them are on Sept. 23. That is the entire remaining evaluation window.

It is another split-squad night against Ottawa, one game at Canadian Tire Centre and one at Scotiabank Arena, running simultaneously. Whatever Jim Hiller and John Chayka still do not know about this roster, they have one evening and a handful of practices to find out.

This is the shortest runway a Toronto team has had in years, and it is by design. The new CBA cut the exhibition schedule, camp opened late, and the season starts Sept. 29 at home against Montreal. The Leafs have already used half their pre-season on a doubleheader they lost twice.

Where the roster stands now

Toronto opened camp with 73 players, including 25 defencemen, which was a deliberately absurd number designed to run two full groups plus a rookie contingent. The first trims came quickly: four players returned to their junior clubs after the Prospect Challenge — Rylan Fellinger, Brody Pepoy, Patriks Plumins and Cooper Williams — and four more released from amateur tryout agreements.

Those are the easy ones. The hard cuts are still in front of the staff, and most of them involve players who either require waivers to be sent to the Marlies or are on tryouts that have to convert into contracts to stick.

The healthy forward group is more or less set at the top. Auston Matthews centres the first line with Matthew Knies and Jack Roslovic. John Tavares centres the second with William Nylander and Gavin McKenna. Nick Paul, Colton Sissons and Easton Cowan have been floated as a matchup third line. That accounts for nine forwards and leaves three or four spots genuinely open.

The four decisions that actually matter

Gavin McKenna's nine games. Not a roster-submission question but the biggest one on the calendar. Toronto can play McKenna up to nine regular-season games before his entry-level contract burns a year. That decision comes due in late October, and everything about camp so far — 19 minutes in his debut, a top-six line assignment, a power-play spot — says Toronto intends to keep him.

Easton Cowan. He won a Calder Cup, he was Hiller's stated standout on day one, and he was sent to Montreal to face Nick Suzuki's line rather than kept home for the showcase game. The Leafs are testing whether he can hold up in a checking role against elite competition. If he can, he is on the roster. If they blink, he is the best player on the Marlies again.

Nick Blankenburg's PTO. The 28-year-old right-shot defenceman is in camp on a professional tryout, which means he has no contract and no roster spot unless Toronto creates one. He is currently the ninth defenceman on a blue line that does not need a ninth defenceman. Wednesday is his last audition.

The seventh defenceman. Morgan Rielly, Chris Tanev, Jake McCabe, Darren Raddysh and Oliver Ekman-Larsson are locks. Emil Andrae has been skating with Rielly since Rielly rejoined the main group. That leaves one spot and several candidates, some of whom cannot be sent down without clearing waivers first.

The injuries are doing some of the work

Max Domi failed his physical and is out indefinitely with complications from off-season back surgery. That is genuinely bad news for a player who was expected to be part of the middle six, and it is also the reason Toronto's cap situation is workable. Long-term injured reserve relief is not a plan anyone wants to depend on, but Chayka will take the room.

William Villeneuve required ACL surgery, which removed a waiver problem in the worst possible way — he was one of the defencemen Toronto would have had to expose. Chris Tanev, who had significant surgery to end last season, has been cleared and Chayka has described his recovery in glowing terms.

Morgan Rielly missed the opening days of camp with a viral condition and rejoined the main group on Sept. 19, paired with Andrae. He has not lost enough time to be a concern for opening night, but a 32-year-old defenceman who misses the first week of camp is a slower start than Toronto wanted from a player it spent the summer declining to trade.

Who has to clear waivers

This is the mechanical constraint that shapes everything. Any player who is no longer waiver-exempt has to be placed on waivers and go unclaimed for 24 hours before he can be assigned to the Marlies. With 31 other teams looking for cheap depth in the last week of September, useful players get claimed.

Toronto's exposure is concentrated on the blue line, where it went into camp with more NHL-calibre defencemen than roster spots. The forward group has a similar if smaller version of the same problem among the fourth-line candidates.

The practical effect is that Toronto will probably carry a slightly larger roster than it needs for the first week rather than lose somebody for nothing, then sort it out after the first injury. Every team does this. It is why the 23-man limit is more of a guideline than a wall in the first fortnight.

Tinus Luc Koblar and the prospects who are leaving

Koblar, the 2025 second-round pick, dressed in Montreal and has been one of the more interesting bodies in camp. He is also expected to head back to Sweden when camp ends, which is the right outcome for an 18-year-old who needs minutes more than he needs an NHL press box.

The same broadly applies to the rest of the prospect group. Toronto's development staff has been clear all summer that the organization is done rushing players, and the Marlies roster is deep enough to give the ones who stay in North America real responsibility.

The exception is McKenna, and the exception exists because generational wingers are the one category where the development math flips. Keeping him is not rushing him. It is the reason the Leafs won the lottery.

What's next

Two games on Sept. 23, both against Ottawa, one in each city. Final cuts in the days after. Roster to the league by 5 p.m. ET on Sept. 28. Puck drop against Montreal on Sept. 29 at Scotiabank Arena, which also happens to be the same opponent that beat both halves of Toronto's split squad on Saturday.

That last detail is worth keeping in mind. Montreal is the best-organized team in this division right now and Toronto's first game of the season is against them. A slow start in the Atlantic is not recoverable the way it is elsewhere — the Leafs found that out last year.

For the full picture of who is on the roster and what everyone costs, see the player breakdown and the contracts page. For where this all leads once the games count, the standings.