The Maple Leafs are now eight games into the season and with the help of some rounding that means the team is now one-tenth of the way through the season. The season is still young but also isn’t nothing and whether you feel the Leafs will be fine or not is somewhat irrelevant. What matters is that this doesn’t look like a club that is attempting to prove that they can do even better without Mitch Marner. Matias Maccelli, Nicolas Roy, and Dakota Joshua haven’t taken steps back from their 2024-25 downturns, and Anthony Stolarz’ save percentage points to a club that is witnessing their PDO bubble burst. You can certainly point to the fact that the Leafs started 4-4-1 last season and went on to perfectly fine regular season. You can also point out that goal is to improve your team and so far there aren’t any signs of that outside of Rielly’s offensive game returning.

Outright panicking about the Maple Leafs might not be warranted, you don’t need to start the rebuild just yet, but not feeling good about the club and having a laundry list of concerns seems justifiable. Here a few Leafs thoughts to distract you from the baseball related butterflies in your stomach:

Craig Berube calling out William Nylander was a bizarre choice. Nylander has been the most consistent offensive threat for the Maple Leafs so far this year and given that he’s never been of particularly high value in his own end, I don’t know why the assumption was that was resolved in training camp. The same holds true of Nylander looking like he’s on a different planet some nights. It’s often one game and then he’s right back to doing what he does. I didn’t think much of the callout because it was the coach calling out the player best equipped mentally for a public callout from the coach and it sent the message that guy who is doing the most on the scoresheet isn’t even living up to expectations so everyone needs to be better. That’s coaching and whether you agree with it or not, it at least looked like a calculated move.

Stolarz’ callout of the Leafs is somewhat understandable given that goaltenders tend to be pissed off when they are run over. Whether or not the Leafs are in a position to turn down powerplays is debatable, but given how their powerplay has gone this season, it was probably better to stand up for your goaltender.

Where the callouts get interesting (READ: turn ugly) is with Berube’s exhaustion of trying to get the top line going. This one has layers and doesn’t really have an easy answer.

The Leafs have gone from having Mitch Marner on that line to test runs of Easton Cowan, Matias Maccelli, Max Domi, and some double shifting of William Nylander. While Craig Berube might be attempting to call out his players, the reality is that Brad Treliving failed him over the summer and Berube either hasn’t found the right fit or committed to a player that best exemplifies what he wants to get out of that line. Berube’s criticism seem intended to spark Auston Matthews to give him more, and anyone longing for more from Auston Matthews isn’t wrong to set the bar higher, but it also seems like too much is being put on the players to simply absorb 100-points disappearing from their lineup.

So where does all of this leave the Maple Leafs? Basically looking as broken as ever. This is a team that needed to figure out a new direction this season and while a strong start out of the gate was probably too much to ask for, the fact that the leaders of this team all seem so divided should be a concern.

The Maple Leafs secondary scoring will improve, team defence will improve, the Leafs will be tougher, have centre depth, and special teams will be upgraded.

This feels like the laundry list of things that Craig Berube and Brad Treliving are banking on when Scott Laughton is finally able to return to the Leafs lineup.

The thing is, the evidence to date is that he won’t and a fourth line centre who can move up to the third line or take key shifts in the top nine on the wing is nice, but expectations for Laughton need to start with him playing like he did last year, which really didn’t solve much.

Laughton knows he can be better and I have some optimism that he’ll be right about that. I also think that Laughton will mesh with bottom six players than guys like Domi and Robertson do but the reality is that Laughton is another question mark thrown into a very lost looking forward group and he is just as likely to be disruptive as he is likely to be a solution for the Maple Leafs at this point.

As is the case with when the Leafs acquired Laughton last season, the club needs to stop looking at bottom six forwards as solutions and instead find ways to bring in top six forwards and push the excess down to the bottom six.

Having written this before Cayden Primeau’s second start of the season (and for that matter, initially before Joseph Woll’s return to the Leafs was announced) I fully acknowledge that I could already be eating crow on his performance at the time you are reading this. If not yet, the midweek back-to-backs with the Blue Jackets and Flames also offer the opportunity for Primeau to say, “I am ready to be the backup for as long as you need me to be.”

The thing is, if Primeau isn’t making that case in the next couple of starts and the Leafs want to give Joseph Woll as much time as possible, Dennis Hildeby’s first couple of games with the Marlies this season make him an option that is hard to ignore. And while Primeau is largely a Leaf for the purpose of not rushing Hildeby, a cup of coffee might soon be warranted and with Woll’s return imminent, it might be the best chance for a look for a long time.

Hildeby isn’t the only one looks like he’s worth a look from the Marlies. Borya Valis has started hot but understandably he will require a bit more time. Travis Boyd doesn’t need time and while the Leafs bottom six falters at producing offence, Boyd is making a case that he could be an option.

William Villeneuve is playing his way into a Leafs audition at some point and if Tanev might require some time, bringing in a right shot like Villeneuve could be an interesting option for the Maple Leafs.

Others like Groulx, Quillan, and Kampf might be better bottom six centre options for the Leafs than Max Domi and if he can’t find his offence the team might want to steer towards the Marlies defensive centre options.

One of the positives for the Leafs this season is depth and with a number of roster Leafs off to poor starts, taking advantage of the Marlies depth to light a fire or turn to a hot hand might be a worthwhile idea, waiving expensive bottom sixers be damned.