I’m not going to lie, it was nice to have an eventful week of talking about the Leafs in the middle of August. The captaincy announcement hit the perfect mark of being something that generates discussion for those of us desperately looking to dissect Leafs news but is easily dismissible for those who just want to go on living their best lives throughout the summer. For those of you still looking to talk something Leaf related, here are a few stray thoughts to tide you over until rookie camp.

The more I think about role Tyler Bertuzzi played for the Leafs last season, the more I’ve become convinced it was always meant to be a one and done. Brad Treliving knew that big raises were coming for Auston Matthews and William Nylander and the departure of TJ Brodie was always going to be the most significant thing the organization had to address from a replacement perspective this summer.

Bertuzzi was a strong short term option, but it is clear he was meant to have a lasting impact as well and that could come in the form of how Matthew Knies plays going forward.

In a lot of ways the two players are quite similar. Optimistically I’d say Knies will ultimately have some upside beyond what Bertuzzi has done, but both players are sound neutral zone cogs that help the Leafs control the puck. Both are critical to puck retrieval in the offensive zone, and both are down low scorers that are smart enough on the ice to be able to move the puck when required as well.

In many ways Bertuzzi seemed like template for Knies and perhaps a way of encouraging the rookie to develop a bit of a mean streak or greasier aspect of his game.

I bring this up because of the success that Auston Matthews had with Bertuzzi and Max Domi down the stretch and into the playoffs last year. Continuing in this direction seemed to not only be beneficial for Auston but the Leafs at large and frees Toronto up to either explore depth through spreading Marner, Nylander, and Tavares around, or going with an overpowering line beyond the Matthews unit.

The best path to a deep Maple Leafs top six seems to involve Knies being able to step into the Bertuzzi role and given that Knies did have some early success with Matthews and Marner, reuniting the Arizona connection might make sense for the Leafs.

About a month ago I expressed what now seems like the obvious and that is the Oilers being a prime target for a pair of offer sheets. I thought the move would come from down the road in Calgary, but all the same, it is interesting to see a team not only see the potential to grab solid, young, long term options for their club, but also take a swipe at a Stanley Cup contender in the offseason. Hockey certainly needs more of this even if it is easy to see the potential for something like this one day biting the Leafs in the ass as well.

From an immediate action perspective, bringing back Holloway and Broberg looks like a no brainer for the Oilers. They can punt a lot of their cap issues down the road by putting Evander Kane on the LTIR, and trading Cody Ceci seems like a small price to pay in order to explore Broberg’s upside over the course of the season.

Where it gets interesting is with the 2025-26 cap picture for the Oilers and the Bouchard and Draisaitl contracts. Even if those deals are incredibly team friendly that leaves the Oilers capped out and needing to move players to ice a full NHL roster. In a lot of ways it feels like these offer sheets have maybe not closed the Oilers cup window but have established that after 2024-25 they will always be forced to do more with less.

The other option is that the Oilers allow one or both of these players to go to St. Louis and maintain some flexibility, in that case it begs the question, what next for St. Louis? With the Blues having a fairly full roster already and potentially two new additions coming in, there is some level of intrigue about whether or not Craig Berube would be interested in bringing in anyone from his old club.

As Brad Treliving did the media rounds following the captaincy announcement, he prepared various word salads about the current state of the Leafs that seemed to walk a fine line between showing positive steps but tempering any expectations that the move was significant enough to put Toronto over the top. In this performance tour, Brad Treliving landed on TSN OverDrive and revisited the familiar but impossible to live up to statement that “everything is on the table.”

I think it safe to say that while everything might have been on the table the organization has proven itself too risk averse to act on any of it. Treliving himself citing that the organization wouldn’t make a change for the sake of change, which is only a valid assessment if you believe that only crap options were presented. If the only thing that was going to trigger the Leafs making a change was an undisputed win of a trade for the Leafs, then yeah, it was misleading to say everything was on the table and there was little interest in enacting change or setting out a new vision for the Maple Leafs, and instead it was passively listening to offers and seemingly rejecting anything that would have required additional steps. Like it or not, the Leafs might be in change for the sake of change territory but a new coach seems like a good enough reason to once again take the conservative approach.

Some silver lining did come in the form of Brad Treliving stating that there are still five weeks left until training camp opens and he didn’t seem to be treating the current Leafs roster as a locked in final product. The limited number of transactions that occur in August points to this being the group the Leafs head into training camp with only Nick Robertson, Jani Hakanpaa, and Alex Steeves’ fates to be determined, but change remaining a possibility allows for the hope that the initial 2024-25 Maple Leafs can still be improved upon.