Opinion: Anthony Stolarz, Not Matthews, Has the Most to Prove in Toronto

Anthony Stolarz has more to prove than anyone on the Maple Leafs

The consensus answer to who has the most to prove on the Toronto Maple Leafs is Auston Matthews, and it is the wrong one. Anthony Stolarz has more riding on the next eight months than any player in the room. Matthews has to be healthy; that is largely a medical question. Stolarz has to prove that a .926 save percentage was who he is and a .893 was the aberration — and he has to do it while a 37-year-old former Vezina winner sits in the next stall waiting for the crease.

That is a different kind of pressure. One of these players has a two-year contract, a captaincy, and a franchise organized around him. The other has one great half-season on his professional résumé and a very public understudy.

The numbers: one great year, one bad one

In 2024-25, Stolarz led the entire NHL with a .926 save percentage and finished third in goals-against average at 2.14. Those are Vezina-calibre rate stats. The catch was volume: he appeared in only 34 games, undone by injuries that kept him from ever holding the net for a sustained stretch.

In 2025-26 the rates collapsed. Stolarz went 10-10-3 with a 3.28 goals-against average and an .893 save percentage in 26 appearances. He missed time with an upper-body injury and finished the season shelved by a groin strain. The Leafs missed the playoffs for the first time in nearly a decade and the goaltending was a real part of why.

Sixty appearances across two seasons. One elite, one below league average. If you are trying to project Stolarz's 2026-27, you are working with a sample too small to settle the argument and too split to ignore either half. That is exactly what "most to prove" means.

Why Matthews is not the right answer

The case for Matthews is straightforward. He has underperformed offensively across two seasons, much of it tied to injury, and he is two years from unrestricted free agency in a market where Macklin Celebrini and Connor Bedard have reset what elite centres cost. He is the captain of a team that missed the playoffs.

Here is why it does not hold up. Matthews's problem is not a skill question — it is a health question, and the reporting this summer has been encouraging. His rehab has progressed to the point where he is shooting again, which we covered in our piece on Matthews clearing a real hurdle in his recovery. Nobody in hockey believes a healthy Matthews stops being a 50-goal threat. The uncertainty is about his knee, not his hands.

There is also no scenario where the organization moves on. Matthews is signed, he is the captain, and Chayka has gone out of his way to describe a happy one. "Most to prove" implies consequence. There isn't one here beyond the contract negotiation that comes in 2027 regardless.

Stolarz has a consequence. It is sitting in the crease beside him.

Bobrovsky changes the stakes entirely

Toronto signed Sergei Bobrovsky on July 1 to a three-year, $21-million contract carrying a $7-million cap hit through 2028-29. That is not a backup's deal. That is a starter's deal handed to a two-time Vezina winner and a two-time Stanley Cup champion who turns 38 before opening night.

Chayka did not stop there. Joseph Woll was moved out. Dennis Hildeby was moved out. The organizational depth chart behind the NHL tandem thinned considerably in a single summer, which is part of why Artur Akhtyamov's exposure in the expansion draft became a live question. We broke down the new arrangement in our look at the Bobrovsky-Stolarz tandem that will define Toronto's season.

Read the roster construction honestly and the message is unambiguous: the Leafs paid $7 million for insurance against Anthony Stolarz. If Stolarz opens the season the way he played last season, Bobrovsky takes the net and does not give it back. There is no version of this where a $7-million goaltender sits behind a struggling one out of politeness.

The 84-game problem

The 2026-27 season is 84 games, the first expanded schedule since the NHL moved to 82 in 1995-96. It opens Sept. 29 — the earliest start in decades — and runs through April 10. Toronto opens on the road in Montreal.

Two extra games does not sound like much until you consider who is playing them. Bobrovsky will be 38 all season. Stolarz has never made more than 34 appearances in an NHL year. Neither of these goaltenders can carry 55 starts, and the organization no longer has the depth behind them to absorb a long absence comfortably.

Which means the split matters enormously, and the split will be decided by performance in October and November. A team that starts slowly in an 84-game schedule spends the winter chasing, and Toronto's margin — the models have the Leafs as a bubble team even after a full roster teardown, as we laid out in our review of the 2026-27 playoff odds — does not accommodate two months of bad goaltending.

What a successful season actually looks like

Be specific about the bar, because vague expectations are how goaltenders get graded unfairly in both directions.

• Volume: 45 or more appearances. Stolarz has never done it. Doing it once would answer the durability question that has followed him his entire career.
• Rate: a save percentage at or above league average, which in the current scoring environment means comfortably clear of .900. Not .926 — nobody should demand a repeat of a career year — but the gap between .893 and average is where playoff spots live.
• Timing: a real start. If Bobrovsky is starting 70 per cent of games by American Thanksgiving, the tandem question is settled and Stolarz's Toronto future is a trade rumour by February.

Hit all three and Stolarz is a legitimate NHL starter with a two-year body of work to point at. Miss on volume but hit on rate and he is a very good 1B, which is a real career. Miss on both and the Leafs will have paid $7 million a season for the answer.

The counterargument

It deserves a hearing. Stolarz's 2025-26 was played behind a defence corps that was aging and, by the deadline, actively being dismantled — the club scratched veterans as asset protection while the roster leaked. Save percentage is not a clean measure of goaltending in that environment. He was also hurt twice, and goaltenders playing through groin problems do not post representative numbers.

Toronto's blue line is not obviously better this season, either. Brandon Carlo and Simon Benoit are gone, Darren Raddysh was imported to run a power play rather than to defend, and the top-four hole remains the organization's most-discussed unsolved problem. Stolarz may face a similar workload behind a similar group and be judged on it again.

All true. It is also the job. Goaltenders who want the net on a Toronto team that intends to make the playoffs get evaluated on results, and Stolarz has one season of results that support the case and one that does not.

What's next

Training camp opens in September and the tandem question gets its first real answer in the preseason split. Watch which goaltender starts the opener in Montreal on Sept. 29 — Jim Hiller's first game behind the Toronto bench — because that decision will have been made weeks earlier and it will tell you exactly how the organization is thinking.

Our position: Stolarz should get the opener and a fair run of starts. He earned a real chance with 2024-25 and he has never been given a healthy season to prove it. But he should also understand what he is playing for, because Chayka spent $21 million making sure the Leafs do not need him to be right. Track the roster on our players page and the schedule on our standings hub.