Morgan Rielly Rejoins the Main Group, and Hiller Gave Him Emil Andrae

Morgan Rielly is back with the main group, and he has a new partner

Morgan Rielly rejoined the Maple Leafs' main training camp group on Friday after spending the opening sessions in a red no-contact sweater with a separate unit, working back from the viral condition that has shadowed his camp. He skated on a pair with Emil Andrae, the Swedish defenceman acquired from Philadelphia in June.

That is two pieces of news in one sentence, and the second is the more consequential of the two.

Rielly's health was always the smaller story. General manager John Chayka downplayed it from the start, saying the 32-year-old should be ready for opening night on Sept. 29, and we wrote at the time that the real cost was reps, not availability. Friday confirms the read. He may still sit out Saturday's split-squad doubleheader against Montreal, but he is on track.

Rielly with Andrae is a genuine surprise

Nobody had this pairing on the board. Andrae is 24, listed at 5-foot-9, and has played a limited NHL sample. He came over from the Flyers on June 16 as part of the return in the Joseph Woll trade, and the expectation through the summer was that he would spend most of the season fighting for a spot rather than opening it on the top pair.

Jim Hiller has already made one unexpected call on the blue line this week, putting Darren Raddysh with Oliver Ekman-Larsson rather than the pairing most people assumed, which we broke down on Thursday. Adding Andrae to Rielly's left is a second move in the same direction: Hiller is building pairings around puck movement rather than around seniority.

It fits what the coach has been saying. Hiller wants a fast, hard-skating team in both directions. Andrae's entire case as a prospect is that he is mobile and moves the puck quickly under pressure. Whether he can survive defensively against NHL forwards at his size is the open question, and pairing him with Toronto's most experienced defenceman is the most sensible way to find out.

What this does to the defence logjam

Toronto invited 25 defencemen to camp, an unusually large group, and the surplus has been the quiet structural problem of the whole exhibition schedule. We laid out the waiver crunch before camp opened: too many bodies, not enough spots, and several of them unable to be sent to the Marlies without clearing waivers first.

Two things have changed that math. William Villeneuve's ACL surgery removed one waiver-eligible body from the equation in the worst possible way. And Andrae skating on the top pair suggests the staff has made up its mind about at least one of the contenders.

The likely opening-night six now looks something like Rielly and Andrae, Jake McCabe with Chris Tanev, and Ekman-Larsson with Raddysh — with Nick Blankenburg on a PTO and a handful of others competing for the seventh job. That is a group with three legitimate puck-movers, which Toronto did not have last season when it conceded 299 goals.

What Andrae actually has to prove

The scouting file on Andrae has been consistent since his draft year: excellent first pass, comfortable under forecheck pressure, good feet, and a frame that invites doubt. He has never been given a long NHL runway to settle the question either way, which is part of why Toronto was willing to take him in the Woll return rather than insisting on a more finished player.

What he has to prove in the next 10 days is narrow. Not that he is a top-pair defenceman — that is not the job. He has to prove he can retrieve pucks and exit the zone cleanly against NHL forecheckers without turning the puck over in bad places. If he does that, the size question becomes manageable, because Rielly is not a partner who needs to be covered for defensively so much as one who needs someone to share the transition load.

The failure mode is obvious too. If Andrae gets hemmed in, the pair spends the season defending, and a 32-year-old Rielly defending 20 minutes a night is exactly the outcome the summer overhaul was meant to avoid.

Toronto's left side is thinner than the depth chart suggests

Count the genuine left-shot NHL defencemen on this roster and the number is uncomfortable. Rielly, McCabe, Ekman-Larsson and Andrae, with Blankenburg in on a PTO and prospects behind them. Two of those four are over 30 and one of the two under 30 has barely played in the league.

That is the context for Hiller's pairing choice. It is not really an experiment in optimization — it is an attempt to find out early whether the fourth name on that list is usable, while there is still time to do something about it if the answer is no. Toronto has no cap room to add, so every solution has to come from inside the building.

The rest of the group is settled enough. McCabe and Tanev reunited on the first day of camp is the pairing the staff trusts defensively, and Raddysh with Ekman-Larsson gives the third pair more offence than Toronto has carried there in years.

Rielly's role is the season's quiet question

Lost in a summer of trade rumours is the fact that nobody has clearly defined what Rielly is supposed to be at 32. He carries a $7.5 million cap hit through 2029-30 and a no-move clause. He is no longer Toronto's best defenceman by any analytical measure. He is still, by a distance, its most important power-play quarterback from the back end.

Hiller's answer so far appears to be: put him with a mobile partner, let him activate, and stop asking him to be a shutdown defenceman. That is the correct use of the player Rielly actually is, and it is the opposite of how he was deployed for stretches of the past two seasons.

Rielly also hits 1,000 NHL games this season, all of them in Toronto. Whatever the trade chatter of the past nine months did to his standing, he will finish the year as the longest-serving Maple Leaf on the roster.

The trade story is genuinely over

It is worth restating, because the summer was exhausting. Chayka said last week that no serious offer for Rielly ever materialized, and Rielly himself said the speculation was finished. The no-move clause gave him control the whole time, and he never showed any inclination to use it to leave.

What that means practically is that Toronto is running it back with a defence corps built around a 32-year-old with a full no-move and a 36-year-old in Tanev coming off core-muscle surgery. The margin for error on the blue line is thin. Getting a young, cheap, mobile defenceman like Andrae to work would materially widen it.

What to watch in the preseason

• Whether the Rielly-Andrae pair survives contact. Practice pairings in September mean less than almost anything in hockey. The first time Andrae has to defend a cycle against a heavy forward group is the actual test.
• Rielly's minutes. If Hiller is serious about reducing his defensive burden, it will show up in zone starts and in who takes the ice against the opposition's top line.
• The power-play unit. Toronto's man advantage finished 25th last season. Rielly running the top unit is the default, but Raddysh's shot gives the staff an alternative it did not previously have.

What's next

The Leafs split the squad Saturday, with the main group staying at Scotiabank Arena to host Montreal and a second group travelling to the Bell Centre. Sergei Bobrovsky starts the home game. Two more preseason games against Ottawa follow, and then the roster has to be set for Sept. 29.

Rielly has 10 days to get to game speed. That is enough — but only just, and only if nothing else goes wrong. On a blue line this thin, that is not a guarantee anyone in the organization is making out loud.