As he heads into a full season with the Maple Leafs, Scott Laughton wants to have a greater voice in the dressing room.
What the 31-year-old said on Thursday, well, hope that it finds an audience with his teammates.
Some takeaways after the Leafs held their first day of practices in training camp at the Ford Performance Centre:
LAUGHTON’S HONESTY
After he was acquired from the Philadelphia Flyers ahead of the NHL trade deadline last March, he had two goals and two assists in 20 regular-season games. In 13 playoff games, the Oakville native contributed two assists.
“I’m a pretty hard self-critic on myself,” Laughton said. “I wasn’t good enough last year. That’s the bottom line.
“I think I started playing better as the playoffs wore on, but I need to be able to contribute offensively too and create that way and help out some of those top guys.”
Public accountability, for the most part, hasn’t been a hallmark in this Leafs era, and some honesty with the paying customers can go a long way.
For Laughton, getting a fresh start with his first camp under coach Craig Berube is paramount. To ensure his voice carries in the room, Laughton knows what must happen.
“Your play has to speak for itself,” Laughton said. “I think it was tough for me at the start, when I was trying to find my footing, and it felt like I was in a little bit of a shell and just a little bit stuck.
“I’ve been in the league for a while, I’ve seen a lot of things, and been through some really tough times in Philly and not everything’s perfect.
“I think guys are pretty lucky here. You make the playoffs a lot of years (nine in a row, the longest current run in the NHL), and you’re a really good team, and you can’t take that for granted, to have a chance every single year. It’s special to have that chance.”
With the Leafs’ roster split into two groups for camp (a third group includes players bound for the Toronto Marlies and other hopefuls), Laughton on Thursday centred Steve Lorentz and Nick Robertson.
Laughton worked at the Leafs’ practice facility for much of the summer, but also used some valuable time away.
To help get back in a proper frame of mind, Laughton spent some of the summer at his new cottage in Muskoka, an older fixer-upper that he and his wife Chloe settled into with son Reed, who was born last year.
Hearing loon calls at dawn with mist rising off the lake was the serenity that Laughton needed. Afternoons were spent relaxing on the family’s pontoon boat.
“It was just nice to get up north to clear my head,” Laughton said. “I think I had a lot going on within myself. You put a lot of pressure on yourself and your head’s spinning.”
LINING THEM UP
Matias Maccelli already is on borrowed time on the top line with captain Auston Matthews and Matthew Knies, from the sound of it.
Berube acknowledged he was reluctant to put Maccelli on the right side on the line at the start of camp. Only because Max Domi is nursing a lower-body injury is Maccelli on the line.
“Max should be back pretty quick, and then we’ll go from there,” Berube said.
The Leafs are in a bind no matter how the right side with Matthews shakes out. Mitch Marner’s 100 points are one thing; how the Leafs go about replacing his heightened defensive awareness is another.
Neither Domi nor Maccelli has that in his game.
There’s more. Regarding Domi and Maccelli, the one that does not start on the line probably won’t be on the second line with John Tavares with William Nylander either.
Bobby McMann is to the left of Tavares now, completing a line Berube has used to his satisfaction before. In 2024-25, the trio outscored the opposition 11-5 in 158 minutes of five-on-five play together.
“I like a big guy with those guys to forecheck, get in there and create loose pucks to help out JT,” Berube said. “Willie’s going to do his thing. We all know that. Bobby, I feel can take another step in his game. It’s going to the net, being hard and physical, and just understanding that that’s his job, and he’s going to get points from it.”
We like Berube’s thinking, but McMann has to prove he’s not a bit of a question mark. We say that because he didn’t score after March 25 last season, never finding the back of the net again after his 20th goal came against Philadelphia. Eleven regular-season games and 13 in the playoffs were dry.
McMann tries to strike a balance between his lack of production and his approach.
“Sometimes you go through those flows, it’s almost like law of averages, you just trust that eventually it’ll come, and you just try to work through that,” McMann said. “The competitiveness of the way that we are as hockey players is that you always want to want more, and look at it like maybe the glass is half-empty, what could have been.”
GOOD SIGNS FOR STOLARZ
Much respect for how Anthony Stolarz is handling his contract situation.
As his agent, Allain Roy, and general manager Brad Treliving grind away to coming to an agreement, Stolarz wants something done before the regular season starts on Oct. 8.
Why is that important?
“Our ultimate goal is to win the Stanley Cup, so once the season starts, it’s all I want to focus on and it’s all I want my attention to be (on),” Stolarz said. “Let my agent and Tre talk that out and hopefully they get something done here soon.”
Stolarz demonstrated last season that he’s the perfect fit for the intense hockey market that is Toronto. He flicked away the pressure to perform with the kind of ease that he stymied opposing shooters. That he led the NHL in save percentage was not a fluke.
“I’m a laidback guy,” Stolarz said. “I look at it as playing in the best men’s league in the world. I get to go out there play in front of 20,000 fans every night. It’s all you can ask for.
“Last year, especially toward the end of the year when I came back from the (knee) injury, just being able to pay down the stretch and play in big games and big moments, I know I am an NHL goalie and a I’m pretty good one.
“I know what I did last year is a high bar and I’m looking forward to matching that this year.”
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