2025 - 2026 Maple Leaf Prediction

This is way too early to be talking hockey. However, the Maple Leaf Hockey Club has just announced the new ticket price list for the coming season, and Leaf Nation has some questions about the across-the-board ticket price hikes.

I'm not going to talk about it here because the hockey media has been crucifying the decision makers.

But I would like to bring your attention to one game -- January 23, 2026. It has my Leafs against the team from Vegas, and Mitch Marner's first time in Scotiabank wearing something other than blue and white.

If you would like to buy a cheap seat ticket to this game -- not standing room with an unobstructed view -- the price is $421.75 each. By comparison, later in the season, the Leafs' all-time rival, the Montreal Canadiens, game for the same seats is $336.75 each. 

It appears someone in the Leaf organization understands the value of "Mitchy". Or is the ticket office just anticipating increased interest in that game so Marner haters can show up to boo him?

I'm a Marner fan.

He gave the team 100+ points each year. He teed the puck up for his buddy Mathews too many times to count. He killed penalties. He was the quarterback of the power play. He had figure skater edges that allowed him to dart between every team's 6'5" defencemen. And, he made every player he played with better. Marner fans have their favourite moments ... mine was a home game ... he broke his stick in his own zone as the puck was moving up ice ... he raced to the bench, got a new stick ... joined the play in the other team's end just in time to score.

Before Mitch packed his bags for the desert, he scored 741 pts in 657 games for the Leafs. By any measure, he's halfway to being selected as an honoured member of the Hockey Hall of Fame. At some appropriate time in the future, Mitch Marner should have retired as a Maple Leaf and not been treated the way the franchise dealt with David Keon and Horton and Mahovlich, Dick Duff and Borje and Vaive and Lanny and Gilmour.

Last year, I predicted the new team captain, Austin Matthews, would have difficulty getting back to his previous 69-goal production due to the weight of the Leaf captaincy in hockey's most scrutinized market (check).

Matthews, with no idea how much that "C" weighs

I predicted former team captain, John Tavares, would have a banner year without the captaincy (check).

I piggybacked Vegas's prediction that the Leafs wouldn't win the Stanley Cup because we both liked several other teams ahead of them (check).

And I said, as a 70-year card-carrying member of Leaf Nation, the 2024/25 edition of the team looked like "a very good American Hockey League team" (check). 

At the beginning of last season, and not part of my prediction, I didn't think that 8 members of that club, Domi and the Swedes and the German guy and Reeves and the new acquisitions - 8 players in total, would score a total of only 34 goals in the entire season. Or, that management would choose to let Robertson, who scored 15 by himself, watch the underachievers while he munched on popcorn in the press box.

The Leafs will not do well for the 2025 - 26 season.

Vegas has them 8th or 9th for the Cup. We know that 

Sin City is very seldom wrong.

Some Random Thoughts:

*Knies will be better ... so will Benoit, but the team is in rebuild mode. That rebuild may be centred around Willy Nylander, who can sometimes be very ordinary at just the moment you expect him to be fabulous.

*Tanev will have healed and be back to lead the team in blocked shots. And, he's one of the team's best passers.

*Carlo is a bust. 

*Reilly should be the Leafs' 3rd line centerman -- ala "Red" Kelly, who joined the Leafs as an All-Star, four-time Cup-winning defenseman, and they made him into a center man, where he earned four more Cups. 

And, are they really thinking about putting Domi on the first line with Matthews as the replacement for Marner?

Mitch is gone.

He and his numbers have not been replaced.

The fans who booed him out of town because he wasn't able to put the team on his back in the playoffs, Messier style, will soon realize their mistake.

MURF ... the fabulous Leaf that fans loved to hate

Marner's departure reminds me of Larry Murphy. He was one of the best defencemen the Leafs ever had, but the fans didn't like him and booed him out of the building.  He landed in Detroit, earned two Stanley Cups to add to the other two he'd earned with Mario in Pittsburgh and is the 5th highest scorer as a defenceman in NHL history, which led to his induction as an honoured member of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

I attended all four 1960s Leafs parades up Bay Street to celebrate their Stanley Cup wins. If, at the end of the 2025 -26 season, Vegas wins the Stanley Cup and Mitch Marner chooses to bring the Cup to Toronto (the way Ray Bourque did when he took the silverware to Boston after winning it with Colorado), I will not attend.

 

Footnote: Dollars and Leafs, and viewership ... "Fans should stay away from Leaf games until ownership gives the city a winning club" -- that's been a common refrain by Toronto hockey media for more than five decades. That suggestion, although a good one, falls on deaf ears. 

Rogers agreed to a 12-year/$11 billion contract to televise NHL games starting in 2027. If you ever thought of Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday night as some sort of birthright, forget it. How long do you think it will take for Rogers to start moving Leaf (and other NHL games) onto a TV Pay Platform? 

I hate to say this ... I hate to even think it. 

As you may know,  I hate the Canadiens with every fibre in my body. It started with "little Charlie Hodge and "Big" Robinson and "The Road Runner" and the "spinerama" and that non-stop, grinding, over-the-top voice of Danny Gallivan. 

For 2025 - 26, I sense a potential disaster ... the rebirth of the Montreal Canadiens as a solid team with lasting playoff potential.

They have a fabulous seven-year, point-a-game captain in Suzuki. A player who gets everyone out of the seats in Caufield. A defenceman who can win a game all by himself in Hudson. The bruise-brothers, Gallager and Anderson. The 19-year-old kid, Ivan Demidov, who's about to become something special, and if Laine decides to play and reach his actual potential (he just got married, so that may help his focus) this is going to be one very tough team to beat. 

I played hockey with Hab owner, Geoff Molson. He knows the game. He's terrifically competitive, and his positive impact on the club shouldn't be ignored.  He's a very responsible guy and is proud of his family's ownership of the team. He's not a self-serving blowhard like former Leaf owner Harold E. Ballard; he works quietly in the background putting the pieces together for his club to get back to its former glory, while Toronto invested 11 years in Brendan Shanahan's vision and his disastrous

ShannyPlan. Incidentally, did you ever wonder where Shanahan came up with the money to give $50 million to his buddy, Babcock? (Please see earlier statement regarding Leaf ticket price increases).Sincere thanks to Keith Pelley for finally showing this guy the door. 

 

And, I haven't mentioned the Habs bench-boss, Martin St. Louis (the first of Geoff's building blocks). During games, he always looks patient, encouraging and in control of his team and their emotions -- perhaps just the type of demeanour and energy his 20-something players can use as a positive to bring out their best ... sort of the opposite of Marty's former Lightning coach, Tortorella.

... if you are interested in any of the other Leaf/Canadien nonsense that I've written, you can access my blog ...

allworldhockey.blogspot.com

What do you think about this year's Leafs?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below ...