Reilly Smith Maple Leafs PTO: The One Camp Invite Chayka Should Make

A Reilly Smith Maple Leafs tryout is the cheapest good idea left on the board

If John Chayka is going to hand out exactly one professional tryout before camp opens Sept. 17, a Reilly Smith Maple Leafs invitation is the one that makes sense. He is 35, unsigned, from Mimico, and he has played 988 NHL games across 15 seasons. He costs nothing to invite. He will not embarrass anyone if he plays. And unlike every other name attached to Toronto this summer, he fits the team Chayka actually built rather than the team people wish he had built.

That is the argument, and it is not a complicated one. It is also, in our view, more defensible than the alternative Toronto keeps getting linked to.

Who Reilly Smith is at 35

Start with the honest version of the player, because the case does not survive dishonesty about it.

Smith finished 2025-26 with 16 goals and 26 points in 69 games for Vegas, on 95 shots, at minus-9. He spent stretches of the year on the fourth line. That is a decline year by any measure — it follows three consecutive seasons above 40 points. His last contract was a one-year, $2-million deal, and he did not get another one on July 1.

What he still is: a 15-year professional who has been used on the penalty kill throughout his career, who won a Stanley Cup with Vegas in 2023, and who has never been the reason a coach lost a game he was supposed to win. He is the kind of player who gets 12 minutes a night, does not create problems, and turns into a useful body when a team loses two forwards in November.

The 988 games matter here in a way they do not for a younger player. Smith is 12 games from 1,000. That is not a hockey argument, but it is a motivation argument, and a player chasing a round number on a tryout is a player who shows up in shape.

Why Toronto has said nothing about tryouts

The Leafs have been conspicuously silent on the PTO market all summer while other clubs handed out invitations. That is not an oversight. It is the contract limit.

Toronto has been operating at the edge of the 50-standard-player-contract ceiling since August, which means every signing requires a corresponding subtraction. A tryout does not count against the limit — but converting one does. So the club has effectively been protecting a single slot rather than filling it, a posture we argued in August was a deliberate choice rather than a failure.

The cap adds the second layer. Toronto is projected roughly $2.75 million over the ceiling and only becomes compliant by opening the season with Max Domi on long-term injured reserve. Nothing gets signed here without something else moving.

That combination is why Toronto passed on the Vladimir Tarasenko and Jonathan Drouin conversations earlier in the summer. Those were reasonable ideas that ran into an unreasonable cap sheet. The constraint is real.

Why Smith is the exception worth making

Here is where we part ways with the wait-and-see crowd.

Chayka spent his first offseason saying one thing over and over: deeper, faster, bigger, heavier, better on the penalty kill. He signed Colton Sissons, Teddy Blueger, Brandon Duhaime and Zack MacEwen, and traded for Nick Paul. Every one of those moves was about the same idea — a bottom six that can be trusted in March.

Smith is that archetype with a longer résumé than any of them. He has killed penalties on a Cup winner. He has played playoff hockey in a hard division. He can slide up the lineup for a stretch without the structure collapsing, which is more than you can say for a fourth-line specialist.

Compare that to the other name in Toronto's orbit. Patrik Laine's market is reportedly down to five teams, Toronto among them, and Laine's ceiling is far higher — a 30-goal power-play shooter is a different order of player. But Laine is also a defensive liability on a team that surrendered close to 300 goals last season and just spent an entire summer trying to stop being that team. Signing Laine is a bet against Chayka's own stated plan. Inviting Smith is a bet on it.

If a general manager gets one free swing, take the one that matches the blueprint.

The Brisson connection nobody has mentioned

There is a small piece of symmetry here that is more than trivia.

Toronto signed Brendan Brisson to a one-year, two-way contract on Sept. 4 — $850,000 at the NHL level, $300,000 in the AHL. Brisson is 24, has 27 career NHL games between Vegas and the Rangers, and split last season between New York and Hartford. We covered the signing when it landed as a low-cost lottery ticket on a former first-rounder.

Brisson is also the player the Rangers sent to Vegas, along with a draft pick, to acquire Reilly Smith. Toronto has already bought one end of that trade. Bringing in the other end on a tryout costs a jersey and a hotel room.

More usefully, it clarifies the competition. Brisson, Steven Lorentz, Dakota Joshua and whoever else is fighting for the last forward spot would all be measured against a veteran benchmark rather than against each other in a vacuum. That is what tryouts are actually for. Our look at which roster spots are genuinely open found fewer than most fans assume — a Smith invite makes the ones that exist competitive.

The case against, and why it is not fatal

The strongest argument against is simply that there is no room. Toronto's forward group is crowded: Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Matthew Knies, John Tavares, Gavin McKenna, Easton Cowan, Jack Roslovic, Nick Paul, Sissons, Blueger, Duhaime, MacEwen, Lorentz, Joshua, Domi when healthy. That is a full lineup and a spare before you add anyone.

The second argument is age. Thirty-five-year-old wingers coming off 26-point seasons do not usually bounce. The minus-9 is not damning on a Vegas team that was fine, but it is not encouraging either.

Both are true. Neither is a reason to decline a free look. A PTO carries no cap hit, no contract slot, and no obligation. The downside is that Smith plays three preseason games and goes home. The upside is that a team with an ageing blue line, a rookie in the top six and a goaltender who turns 38 this season has one more adult in the room if October goes badly.

Our verdict

Invite him. Do not sign him unless he earns it in preseason, and define "earns it" as clearly better than Lorentz on the penalty kill, because that is the only job actually available.

The realistic outcome is that Smith does not make the Maple Leafs. That is fine. The point of a September tryout is not to find a top-six winger — nobody finds one in September. It is to make your marginal players compete for their jobs in front of a new coach, and Jim Hiller has never run a camp in Toronto. Give him a veteran to measure against.

What's next

Tryout announcements typically cluster in the 72 hours before camps open, which puts the window at roughly Sept. 14 to 16. If Toronto is going to do this, it happens next week or not at all.

Watch two things. First, whether Chayka clears a contract slot in the next week — a waiver claim going the other way, or a minor trade. That is the tell that something is coming. Second, whether Smith signs anywhere at all; a 35-year-old with 988 games and a Cup ring will find a camp somewhere, and if it is Ottawa or Buffalo rather than Toronto, the Leafs will have passed on a free asset for the second September in a row.

You can see how the current forward group stacks up on our players page, and the cap situation that governs every one of these decisions on the contracts page.