NHL Preseason Games Cut to Four: The Maple Leafs Have the Most to Lose

NHL preseason games are down to four, and veterans can only play two

The number of NHL preseason games each club plays is cut in half this season, from eight to four, and there is a second restriction attached that has received almost no attention: any player with 100 or more career NHL games can appear in a maximum of two of them. Training camp itself is capped at 13 days for players who appeared in at least 50 games last season.

These are trades the players' association made willingly. The exhibition schedule was widely disliked, the regular season expands to 84 games, and veterans get a shorter, lighter runway into the year. On balance it is a sensible change for the sport.

It is also, specifically and unluckily, close to a worst-case scenario for the Toronto Maple Leafs — a team with a first-year head coach, an almost entirely rebuilt bottom six, an 18-year-old first overall pick, a new goaltending tandem and a blue line that has not played a shift together. Toronto has more to figure out this September than any team in the division and roughly half the ice time in which to figure it out.

What the new camp rules actually say

Three provisions matter. The exhibition season is four games per club, down from the eight most teams played. Players with 100-plus career NHL games are limited to two exhibition appearances. And players who suited up for 50 or more games in the previous season face a maximum 13-day training camp.

Taken together, they mean the veteran core of an NHL roster will play two exhibition games and spend under two weeks in camp before the season opens in late September. That is a dramatic compression of what used to be a month-long runway.

The knock-on effect is that exhibition ice time shifts decisively toward players who have not established themselves — prospects, tweeners, and anyone under the 100-game threshold. In a normal year that is a nice development opportunity. In Toronto's year it is the entire evaluation process.

Why this lands hardest on a team with a new coach

Jim Hiller was named the 41st head coach in franchise history on June 17, replacing Craig Berube, who was fired May 13 after the club missed the playoffs. Hiller has coached in Toronto before, as an assistant from 2015 to 2019, and most recently ran the bench in Los Angeles. He is not learning the market. He is installing a system.

Installing a system takes reps. Under the old calendar a coach had eight exhibition games and a long camp to teach a forecheck, sort out breakout reads, build special teams and see which combinations survive contact with an opponent. Hiller gets four games, and his best players can only be in two of them.

Whatever Toronto looks like on opening night will be a lot less rehearsed than it would have been in any previous season. That is true for all 32 clubs, but it costs more when the coach is new, the system is new and the roster turnover has been this heavy.

The bottom six is a six-man audition with almost no stage

John Chayka spent the summer rebuilding Toronto's depth from scratch. Nick Paul arrived from Tampa Bay. Colton Sissons, Teddy Blueger, Brandon Duhaime, Jack Roslovic and Zack MacEwen all came aboard. Dakota Joshua and Steven Lorentz remain on the roster and have both been discussed as trade candidates given the club's cap position.

That is eight or more legitimate NHL forwards competing for what is functionally four or five jobs, plus penalty-kill and matchup roles that have to be sorted out. We broke down how the group is meant to fit in our look at Toronto's bottom six and the penalty kill.

Here is the problem: most of those players are established NHLers well past 100 career games. They are capped at two exhibition appearances each. The competition that was supposed to be settled on the ice in September will largely be settled in practice, on reputation, and on what the coaching staff believed in August. That is a meaningfully worse evaluation process, and it raises the odds Toronto gets a depth decision wrong.

The split-squad hedge

There is one genuine piece of good fortune in Toronto's schedule, and it was probably not designed as a hedge against this rule.

The Leafs' four-game exhibition slate is built around split-squad dates — September 19 against Montreal and September 23 against Ottawa, each with two Toronto rosters playing on the same night, one at home and one on the road. We covered the full slate when it was announced in our piece on the 2026 preseason schedule.

Split-squads effectively double the number of players who get game reps on a given night. In a four-game preseason where veterans are capped at two appearances, a schedule loaded with split-squads is the single best structural answer available. Toronto will get more distinct players into game situations than a club playing four conventional exhibitions. That matters more this year than it ever has.

What it means for Gavin McKenna and Easton Cowan

The compression cuts both ways for Toronto's young forwards, and the direction depends on the player.

Gavin McKenna has no NHL games, so he is unrestricted by the two-game cap and can play all four exhibitions if the club wants. In a shortened preseason his share of the available minutes goes up, not down, and he will be surrounded by more established teammates than a prospect normally would be, because the veterans have to be somewhere. That is a better evaluation environment for an 18-year-old than the old eight-game slog, where the best players disappeared after game four.

Easton Cowan is the more interesting case. He is coming off a rookie professional season and a Calder Cup run with the Marlies, and he is fighting for a top-six role against a roster that got considerably deeper this summer. Every exhibition minute is an audition, and he is likely under the 100-game threshold, which means he can play the full slate. We looked at his situation in detail in our piece on Cowan's roster spot and top-six audition.

The catch is who he plays against. Shortened preseasons tend to produce weaker opposition lineups league-wide, because every club is protecting the same veterans. Numbers put up in those games are worth less than they used to be, and the coaching staff will know it.

The goaltending wrinkle

Toronto's crease has more to sort out than most. Sergei Bobrovsky arrives at 38 on a three-year, $21 million contract as the projected starter. Anthony Stolarz is the No. 2. Neither has played a game in this system, and the two of them need to divide 84 regular-season starts rather than the 82 they would have split in any prior year.

Four exhibition games between two established goaltenders, both above the 100-game threshold, is not much of a ramp. Bobrovsky is the more delicate case: a goaltender that age typically wants more preseason work, not less, and his club is about to ask him for the heaviest workload of his late career. We looked at the tandem and its risks in our breakdown of Toronto's 2026-27 goaltending.

What's next

The Leafs open exhibition play on September 19 against Montreal, with the regular season beginning in late September under the new 84-game format. Watch two things when the camp roster is released: how Toronto distributes its four exhibition games across the split-squad dates, and whether the club front-loads its veterans' two permitted appearances or saves them for the final week.

That second choice is a real tell about how confident Hiller's staff is in what it already knows. A coach who saves his veterans for the last two games is still evaluating. A coach who uses them early is building chemistry for a fast start — which, given Toronto's front-loaded October, might be the smarter play. We ran the numbers on that schedule in our look at the Leafs' 16-game October.