It’s the day of the Toronto Maple Leafs‘ first preseason game, meaning that it’s officially time to overreact to training camp line rushes and spin article ideas out of it. With Mitch Marner out of the picture for the first time in nine years, there is a lot of intrigue regarding who will take his spot on the top line and how the rest of the forwards will fill out.

Although Max Domi hasn’t skated yet due to a minor lower-body injury, head coach Craig Berube seemed to imply on Wednesday that he would skate on a line with Auston Matthews and Matthew Knies upon his return.

In the meantime, new acquisition Matias Maccelli has been in his place. It makes sense that Domi and Maccelli are leading the charge to take reps on the top line, with Maccelli putting up 40 and 38 assists in his two strongest seasons, and Domi already having shown that he has chemistry with Matthews in the past. What makes the situation even more interesting is that Berube also implied that he wanted to start Bobby McMann on the second line next to John Tavares and William Nylander.

“I like a big guy with those two guys [Tavares and Nylander], to forecheck, get in there and create loose pucks, help out JT in those situations,” Berube said of McMann. “Willy’s gonna do his thing, we all know that. But Bobby, I feel, can take another step in his game.”

While McMann had 20 goals last season and gelled nicely with Tavares and Nylander, he also fell into a brutal slump at the end of the season, going without a goal in his last 11 games, and he carried that into the postseason with only three assists in 13 games. It’s not fair to say that the end of McMann’s season and his first playoff run as an NHLer are indicative of his game as a whole, but if Domi indeed is going to be the one to start on the top line, the Leafs would be doing themselves a disservice if they didn’t start Maccelli on Tavares’ wing.

Let me be clear that this is more of a pitch for Maccelli’s untapped potential than it is an anti-McMann in the top-6 piece. You can’t argue against McMann’s 20 goals last season even if there was some inconsistency towards the end, and Berube’s logic of having a power forward on that line to take some weight off of Tavares in the board battles checks out. But, of all the players not named Matthews, Tavares, Nylander, or Knies, Maccelli has the highest ceiling offensively, and giving him the chance to skate with some elite players in Tavares and Nylander while playing his natural position seems like a no-brainer, if nothing else just to see what he’s capable of doing.

Maccelli needs a fresh start more than anybody else. He was a standout player in the final two years of the Arizona Coyotes, but the team’s move to Utah coincided with his dip in production. After posting 49 points in 64 games in his rookie season back in 2022-23 and 57 points in 82 games in 2023-24, he managed only 18 points in 55 games last season. He found himself without any consistent linemates, and it affected his production in a major way.

At 24 years old, Maccelli deserves more grace than the assumption that he can’t repeat what he did in the first two seasons of his career. And, as much as the thought of having him skate alongside Dakota Joshua and Nicolas Roy, who seem destined to play together on the third line this season, is intriguing, it would benefit all parties more to capitalize on his motivation to rebound, which he says has never been higher.

“It’s probably the highest it’s ever been,” Maccelli said of his motivation at the Leafs & Legends Charity Golf Classic. “Coming here, I mean, what’s a better place to play?”

Now, saying he should start the season there does not mean the Leafs should force him to stay there even if there’s an obvious struggle. That’s the beauty of the first few months of the season – there’s lots of time to experiment. However, we’ve seen what happens when a skill player is floated around the lineup too often instead of being allowed the opportunity to develop chemistry with consistent linemates. Look at Nick Robertson and the fact that he’s about to enter his third training camp without a clear outlook of his future with the organization.

I’m not saying that’s going to happen to Maccelli if he doesn’t start the season in the top-six, but if the Leafs want to maximize his value and get him sniffing that 57-point mark again, give him the chance to develop some chemistry with the centre who scored 38 goals last season and the winger who has scored 40 or more in three straight seasons.

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