Opinion: Chayka Fixed the Maple Leafs' Bottom Six and the Crease. The Top-Four Defence Is Still a Hole.

The part of the Maple Leafs defence Chayka hasn't solved

Give John Chayka his due. In one summer he tore down and rebuilt the Maple Leafs' bottom six, reset the crease with a veteran goaltender, and shed a dozen executives on his way to remaking the hockey department. But look past the churn and one problem is still sitting there, unaddressed: the Maple Leafs defence, specifically the top four, is older and thinner than it was in the spring, and nobody in the room has been added to fix it.

This is the uncomfortable read on an otherwise busy offseason. Chayka spent his cap dollars where they were easiest to spend — depth forwards, a goalie, mobility on the edges — and did comparatively little to the one area that decides playoff series. A Maple Leafs defence that already had questions lost a body and gained a year of age. That is not a retool of the blue line. That is deferral.

The Brandon Carlo subtraction still stings

Start with what left. The Leafs traded Brandon Carlo to St. Louis for two third-round picks — a cap-clearing move that returned draft capital but no NHL help. Whatever you thought of Carlo's contract, he was a legitimate top-four, shutdown right-shot who ate hard minutes. You do not replace that with picks and a prayer, and Toronto did not replace it at all.

In his place, the everyday group leans harder on Chris Tanev, Jake McCabe and Oliver Ekman-Larsson — a trio whose collective age is climbing and whose durability is a live question every season. Tanev is a warrior who has also missed significant time in his career. Ekman-Larsson is a useful veteran, not a No. 2 defenceman anymore. The Leafs are asking an older group to do more, with less margin, over a longer 84-game season. That is a recipe for a tired, exposed back end by March.

The right-shot problem underneath it all

Dig one layer down and the imbalance gets worse. Trading Carlo did not just cost the Leafs a body — it cost them a right-shot defenceman, and Toronto is now heavy on the left and thin on the right. Tanev and Raddysh carry the right side, and behind them the cupboard is bare of proven options. That is a brittle arrangement. One injury to Tanev, who has never been an 82-game lock, and the Leafs are shuffling left-shots to their off side or dressing a prospect before he is ready.

Handedness is not a cosmetic concern. A balanced blue line lets a coach roll pairings and run the power play the way it is designed. An unbalanced one forces compromises every night — a left-shot playing the right point, a mismatch on the breakout, a defenceman receiving passes on his backhand under pressure. The Leafs spent the summer adding forwards and did nothing to fix a right-side depth chart that a single injury can expose.

The Rielly paradox

Then there is Morgan Rielly, the player Chayka has spent the summer trying to move. Here is the paradox: the Leafs both want to trade their most experienced puck-moving defenceman and cannot afford to get worse on the blue line. A Rielly trade clears cap and hands minutes to youth, which is defensible. But if Rielly goes and the return is picks and prospects rather than a comparable defenceman, the top four gets thinner still. You cannot subtract from a group this thin and call it addition by subtraction.

The honest version of Chayka's plan seems to be: trade Rielly, promote Emil Andrae, and trust that a younger, cheaper, more mobile blue line is good enough. Maybe it is. But "good enough" on defence is how the Leafs have lost playoff series for a decade, and betting the retool on a 24-year-old and a hope that the veterans stay healthy is a thin plan for a team that still employs Auston Matthews in his prime.

Where the money went

The tell is the spending. Chayka poured his summer cap into the bottom six and the crease — a wave of depth forwards and a veteran goaltender on a multi-year deal. Those moves have merit; the bottom six was soft and the goaltending needed a reset. But they also left Toronto over the cap with no clean way to add a top-four defenceman without first subtracting salary. In other words, the roster is now built such that improving the blue line requires a trade the front office has struggled to make all summer.

That is a sequencing problem. You fix the position that wins playoff series first, then round out the depth. Chayka did it backwards — filled the easy holes, and left the hard one for a trade market that has not cooperated. The result is a team that looks deeper up front and shakier on the back end than it did in April. Depth scoring is nice in October. It is defence and goaltending that survive May, and the Leafs invested in only one of the two.

None of this is an argument that Chayka has been passive — the opposite is true. He has been one of the busiest managers in hockey since May. But activity is not the same as addressing your biggest weakness, and a summer measured by transaction volume can still leave the most important question unanswered. The Leafs have made a dozen moves and the one that matters most, a genuine upgrade to the top four, is not among them. Busy is not the same as done.

What a real fix would look like

The path exists, and it runs through Rielly's contract. If Chayka can turn a Rielly trade into a younger top-four defenceman rather than futures, the whole picture changes — Toronto would get its cap relief and keep its top four intact. That is the deal to hold out for, even if it takes until camp or the deadline. Flipping Rielly for picks to clear space, then hoping Andrae and a healthy veteran core carry the load, is the lazy version. The Leafs have the assets and the cap flexibility, once Rielly moves, to do better.

Failing that, the internal answer has to be development. Toronto's prospect pipeline has right-shot options like Ben Danford climbing, and Andrae is ready for more. Leaning on youth is a legitimate strategy — but only if the organization actually commits to playing the kids instead of defaulting to aging veterans out of habit. Too often this franchise has talked about youth in July and dressed 34-year-olds in January.

The bottom line

Chayka has had a productive, aggressive summer, and the forward group and goaltending are genuinely better. But the Maple Leafs defence is the position that has decided this franchise's ceiling for years, and it is the one Chayka has not truly addressed. A team that lost Carlo, is trying to trade Rielly, and is banking on 30-somethings staying healthy has not fixed its blue line — it has papered over it. The summer is not over, and there is still time to turn a Rielly deal into a real solution. But until that happens, the retool is unfinished, and everyone at the cap table knows it.