Jack Roslovic Is the Maple Leafs' Cheapest Top-Six Answer

Jack Roslovic and the Maple Leafs' unresolved top six

The Jack Roslovic signing has been filed under bottom-six depth all summer, and that is the wrong drawer. The Toronto Maple Leafs are three weeks from camp with two open jobs in their top six, no cap space to buy one, and a $4 million winger on the roster who scored 21 goals last season. Toronto does not need to solve the top six with a trade. It needs to admit it already made the move on July 1.

This is an opinion, and here is the version of it that will annoy people: Roslovic should open the season on Auston Matthews' wing, ahead of Easton Cowan and ahead of Gavin McKenna, and Jim Hiller should need a reason to take him off it rather than a reason to put him there.

What Toronto actually bought

Roslovic signed a two-year, $8 million contract on July 1, 2026 — a $4 million cap hit running through 2027-28. He is 29. He appeared in 69 games with Edmonton last season, scoring 21 goals and adding 15 assists for 36 points, then added an assist in six playoff games.

The career file: 595 regular season games with Winnipeg, Columbus, the New York Rangers, Carolina and Edmonton, producing 123 goals and 173 assists for 296 points. That is a legitimate middle-of-the-lineup NHL forward with a real goal-scoring record, not a fourth-line body.

It also was not an impulse buy. Toronto pursued Roslovic in free agency a year earlier, before he signed in Edmonton, and circled back the moment he was available again. Front offices do not chase the same depth forward across two consecutive summers. They chase players they have a specific plan for.

The 21 goals are real, and so are the caveats

Twenty-one goals in 69 games is a 25-goal pace over a full season, and it would have put him fourth on last year's Leafs. That number does not need spin.

It does need context. Roslovic scored those goals in Edmonton, in a lineup with as much offensive firepower as any in the league, and a shooter's totals move with the quality of the passer beside him. His assist column — 15 in 69 games — is the honest signal here. Roslovic is a finisher who does not create much for others. His value is entirely dependent on being put somewhere the puck arrives.

Which happens to describe the exact job Toronto needs filled.

The Matthews connection is not a gimmick

Roslovic and Matthews came up together in the United States National Team Development Program, and they were not just teammates — they were the program's top two scorers in 2015, Matthews with 48 points in 24 games and Roslovic right behind him with 38 in 25. They have known each other's game since they were teenagers.

Roslovic addressed the reunion after signing. "Stoked. It's going to be awesome," he told reporters in early July, describing himself as familiar with Matthews as a player and as a person.

Chemistry stories are usually filler. This one is worth something specific: Matthews' most productive wingers have consistently been players who get open in the same reads he does and shoot without hesitating. Roslovic's whole profile is arriving in a shooting lane on time. Whether it works is an empirical question that gets answered in October, but the theory is coherent, and the two players have a decade of shared hockey vocabulary to shorten the learning curve.

The competition, and why it argues for Roslovic

Four top-six jobs are effectively spoken for: Matthews, William Nylander, Matthew Knies, and John Tavares. That leaves two, and three serious candidates for them — Roslovic, Easton Cowan and McKenna.

Cowan and McKenna are the future and both will get top-six minutes at some point this season. Neither should be handed the job on September 29. Cowan is 21 and coming off a season split between the NHL and a Calder Cup run; McKenna is an 18-year-old whose rookie tournament participation is not even settled. Opening the season by asking either to carry first-line offensive responsibility beside a captain returning from knee surgery is a great way to produce two problems instead of solving one.

Roslovic is the low-variance version. Put him on the top line, let the kids earn their way up from the third, and promote whoever forces the issue. That is a sequencing argument, not a talent argument, and sequencing is what a team with no cap room and a bounce-back season to salvage should care about.

The case against

It deserves airing. Roslovic has been a middle-six forward on five franchises across nine seasons, and there is a reason none of them built a top six around him. He does not drive play. Possession metrics have never loved him. At 29 he is what he is, and betting on a career middle-six winger to hold a first-line job is how teams end up with a first line that scores and gets scored on in equal measure.

There is also the version where Toronto's answer is simply Knies on Matthews' left with McKenna on the right, which is where a lot of projections have landed, and Roslovic drops to a third line that suddenly looks excellent. That outcome is fine. It is arguably better.

What is not fine is the framing that has followed him since July 1 — that a $4 million winger who scored 21 goals is a checking-line addition alongside Colton Sissons and Teddy Blueger. John Chayka does not pay $4 million a season for a fourth-line role when the club is already $2.75 million over the salary cap. That contract is a statement of intended usage.

The verdict

Toronto's offseason is finished. There is no cap room for another forward, the trade market for a top-six winger costs a young defenceman the Leafs cannot spare, and the remaining free agent list is a collection of reclamation projects. The top-six hole either gets filled internally or it does not get filled.

Given that, the best available answer is the one already signed, already familiar with the captain, and costing less than 4 per cent of the cap. Roslovic will not be the best player on Toronto's first line. He does not have to be. He has to finish what Matthews and Nylander create and not be a defensive liability doing it, and 21 goals last season says the first half of that is well within range.

What's next

Camp opens in September and Hiller's first line combination will be one of the earliest real signals of how this coaching staff thinks. Watch the preseason split-squad games against Montreal beginning September 19, and watch who takes reps with Matthews once he is a full participant.

The broader question sits behind it. Toronto spent this summer adding volume — five free agent forwards plus Nick Paul by trade — rather than adding a star. That approach only works if at least one of those additions plays above his contract. Roslovic, at $4 million with a decade of history with the captain, is the likeliest candidate to be that player. The cap sheet more or less requires it.