Maple Leafs Waivers Watch: 15 Players Hit the Wire, Toronto Passed

Maple Leafs Waivers: Fifteen Players Hit the Wire and Toronto Watched

Fifteen NHL players were placed on waivers Tuesday, Sept. 22, the first genuinely busy day of the wire season, and the Maple Leafs waivers column was blank. Toronto put nobody on and, when the names cleared Wednesday, is not expected to claim anybody either. That is a choice, and it is worth explaining, because the wire is about to get far more crowded and Toronto's own roster math is one of the tightest in the league.

Players who clear waivers become eligible to be assigned to their club's American Hockey League affiliate. Teams have until Sept. 28 to set opening-night rosters. Between those two dates, most of the league's marginal NHL contracts get sorted.

Who Actually Went on the Wire

Two clubs accounted for two-thirds of Tuesday's list.

The Detroit Red Wings put six players on waivers: defencemen William Lagesson and Jacob Bryson, and forwards John Leonard, Sheldon Dries, Dominik Shine and Cameron Butler. The New York Rangers added four: defencemen Dennis Cholowski and Urho Vaakanainen, and centres Justin Dowling and Juuso Parssinen. The New York Islanders placed two, with Dallas, Washington and Nashville adding one apiece.

None of those are franchise-altering names, which is the point of late September. This is the tier of player who exists in the space between a No. 7 defenceman and an AHL top-line forward, and the wire is how the league redistributes them.

Why Detroit Waiving Six Matters in the Atlantic

Six players from one club on one day is a lot, and it is happening in Toronto's division under an interim front office. Detroit has been operating with Shawn Horcoff as interim general manager, and this is the first hard evidence of how that staff intends to shape the roster.

What it signals is a club deciding its NHL depth is settled and clearing the runway for the players it actually plans to use. Whether that is confidence or resignation depends on what Detroit does with the space, and that is worth watching from Toronto, because the Atlantic's wild-card math runs through exactly this kind of roster housekeeping.

The Vaakanainen name on the Rangers' list is the one most likely to draw a claim somewhere. A left-shot defenceman who has played real NHL minutes and is still in his twenties is the most claimable profile that exists in late September. He will not be claimed by Toronto, for reasons that come down to arithmetic.

Why Toronto Almost Certainly Is Not Claiming Anyone

The Maple Leafs do not have room. Not in the lineup, and more importantly, not on the cap sheet.

PuckPedia has carried Toronto at roughly $106.75 million against a $104 million ceiling with a full 23-man roster — about $2.75 million in the red. That is survivable only because Max Domi is expected to open the season on long-term injured reserve after back surgery in late May that ran into complications. Park his $3.75 million cap hit there and the overage stops mattering, with the important caveat that the new LTIR relief ceiling sits at roughly $3.82 million for 2026-27. Toronto clears that threshold by about $70,000. There is no margin in this to absorb a claim.

A waiver claim is not a free look. It is a full cap hit and an NHL contract you now own, and it costs you the roster spot of somebody already in your building. For a team already using an injury to get legal, that is not a live option.

The Leafs' Own Waiver Problem Is Still Coming

Here is the part that actually affects Toronto's week. The Leafs trimmed camp to 32 players Monday when they assigned 30 players to the Marlies. Getting from 32 to a legal opening-night roster is a different exercise, because the remaining cuts are mostly players who require waivers to reach the AHL.

The blue line is where it bites hardest. We flagged in early September that Toronto was carrying eight NHL defencemen for seven spots, and camp has not resolved it. Every one of those decisions is a player another club could take for nothing.

That is the real cost of John Chayka's summer. He signed and traded for enough legitimate NHL depth that the bottom of the roster is genuinely competitive, and the price of genuine competition is that somebody good enough to play gets exposed. Last year's Leafs did not have this problem, because last year's Leafs did not have this much depth.

What a Claim Would Have to Be Worth

For the sake of argument: what would it take for Toronto to put in a claim before Sept. 28?

It would have to be a player who is better than the eighth defenceman or the 13th forward already on the roster by a wide enough margin to justify creating a cap problem and burning a contract. Nothing on Tuesday's list came close. The names on the wire this week are depth pieces, and Toronto's depth is the part of the roster Chayka already fixed.

The more realistic Toronto angle is the reverse direction — whether anything Toronto exposes gets claimed. A club with cap space and a thin blue line is exactly the buyer for a seventh NHL defenceman, and there are several of those around the league. Losing a useful player for nothing in the last week of September would be an irritating way to start a season that already has a thin margin for error.

How Maple Leafs Waivers Decisions Actually Work in Late September

The mechanics matter here, because they explain why a quiet Tuesday for Toronto is not the same as a quiet week.

Any player on an NHL contract who has passed a threshold of professional games played or seasons since signing must clear waivers before being assigned to the minors. Young players are exempt for a period, and the exemption burns off faster for players who sign at older ages. That is why a 21-year-old prospect can be sent to the Marlies without a second thought and a 26-year-old journeyman cannot.

A player placed on waivers sits on the wire for 24 hours. Any of the other 31 clubs can put in a claim, and if more than one does, priority runs in reverse order of the standings. In September that means the previous season's finish. Toronto missed the playoffs last spring, so the Leafs would hold relatively favourable claiming priority right now. It is a real advantage the club is in no financial position to use.

Toronto's Exposure Is the Part That Can Cost Something

Strip away the league-wide noise and Toronto's week reduces to one question: how many useful NHL players does the club have to risk to get legal by Sunday?

The answer is more than zero, and that is new. The Leafs have already had to move players through the wire this month, and the roster is deeper now than at any point last season. A 13th forward with a couple hundred NHL games, or an eighth defenceman who can hold down a third pair, is exactly the player a rebuilding club with cap space takes for free in September rather than paying for in July.

That risk is the unglamorous invoice for a good summer. Chayka built a roster where the marginal players are genuinely NHL-calibre, and the league gets a one-week window to take one of them for nothing. Most recent years, Toronto has been on the other side of that transaction.

What's Next

Tuesday's 15 clear Wednesday at noon unless claimed. Expect the wire to get heavier Thursday and Friday as the Sept. 28 deadline closes in, and expect Toronto to be a participant on the exposure side rather than the claiming side.

The Leafs have one preseason meeting with Ottawa left before the roster is due, and they open the regular season at home against Montreal on Sept. 29. Between now and then, the interesting Toronto transactions will not be claims. They will be the names the club is willing to risk. You can follow the roster as it settles on our players page and the cap picture driving all of it on the contracts page.

The wire in late September is where teams tell you what they actually think of their own players. Toronto's answer is coming this week.