The Toronto Maple Leafs headed into the 2025 offseason with one of the most difficult tasks of the Auston Matthews era – replacing Mitch Marner’s regular season production. For whatever you believe about Marner’s impact beyond a strong regular season, filling the gap of a 100-point player who plays on both sides of the puck is not an easy job, and one of the players who was acquired in an effort to help fill that gap is Matias Maccelli.

Maccelli, 25, had two very productive seasons with the Arizona Coyotes before his point totals fell off in 2024-25, the first year after the team moved to Utah. He was acquired for a conditional third round pick with a legitimate opportunity to claim a top six role in front of him.

The thing with reclamation projects is that you have to operate with the acknowledgement that it might not pan out, and to start the 2025-26 season, it was looking like it was trending in that direction. Maccelli was regularly shuffled throughout the lineup, playing on the first line in one game and the fourth line the next, and it got to a point where he was benched for 9 games, nearly a month’s worth, before finally returning to the lineup on December 20 against the Nashville Predators.

Amidst all of that, Maccelli has 15 points in 29 games and six in seven games since returning to the lineup.

One of the main issues with Maccelli early on was the immediate realization that he wasn’t far off of what Max Domi brought. While Domi has had higher highs and lower lows, Maccelli was the same type of player – small, strong playmaker, weak on the defensive side of the puck. Domi has seen a couple of scratches this season himself, but between his history with the team and his contract, Maccelli has gotten the short end of the stick more often than not. And, just like Domi, he struggled with consistency. He tallied an assist in his first game, then went five without a point. Then he had four goals and seven points in his eight games before managing only one assist in his next eight, leading to his stint on the bench.

While it’s too early to crown Maccelli as a new-and-improved product, he’s looked twice as confident with the puck since returning to the lineup. He’s attacking the neutral zone with confidence, he’s finding his teammates’ sticks and picking appropriate spots to shoot, and he’s allowing himself to take control of the play during offensive zone pressures. Of course, some of this comes as a benefit of increased opportunity with Matthews, William Nylander, and Dakota Joshua all missing time with injuries, but seizing the opportunity is exactly what he had to do to get Berube’s attention. It’s a good sign considering some players would have had all the reason to get discouraged and perhaps seek a trade for a better opportunity.

While he could still use some work in his own zone and isn’t a physical player, his increased confidence and hockey IQ have caught the eye of head coach Craig Berube, indicating that finding a fit for Maccelli in his new coach’s system might not be a lost cause just yet.

“He just makes plays. He’s done a good job on the power play,” Berube said of Maccelli. “He’s very good at breakouts, entering the zone, making plays and getting it set up, and he sees the ice well on the power play. He just has composure with the puck, in tight areas. He finds people. So, he’s making a lot of good plays with the puck.”

As much as Maccelli probably deserved to sit for a game or two during those inconsistent stretches in October and November, sitting out of the lineup for nine games in a row felt a little bit aggressive. The Leafs did string together some wins in the early stages of his benching, so it made sense not to go back to him immediately, but once things dried up there’s easily an argument to be made that he should have been given a look sooner. The condition on the pick used to acquire him states that it will become a second round pick if Maccelli hits 51 points, so perhaps there’s a tinfoil hat angle to take here, as well.

In all seriousness, the opportunity has never been greater for the young Finn. The Leafs are finally putting together a good stretch of hockey, with their last real bad loss coming against the Dallas Stars before Christmas, but there’s an entire half-season ahead of them with no promise of a playoff berth at this point. You can imagine the Leafs don’t exactly want to shell out the limited assets they have for another deadline bonanza, and if Maccelli can continue producing like he has been since he returned to the lineup, the Leafs would probably love to fill one of those gaps internally instead of having to compete in what projects to be another seller-heavy market assuming the current parity of the league keeps up.

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