There are two ways to look at the Maple Leafs signing Ryan Reaves to a three-year deal, after apparently making him one of their top priorities in free agency.
The first is that it’s a low-risk bet on a veteran who has a defined role and knows how to fill it. Reaves is as close as today’s NHL comes to an old-school enforcer, the guy who’s there to make sure the other team stays in line. He doesn’t have to fight to do that job, but he will, and opponents know it. The Maple Leafs have plenty of skill at the top of the lineup but they can be pushed around, and traditional hockey thinking says that means there needs to be some snarl at the bottom.
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At three years and a $1.35 million cap hit, Reaves won’t crush the Leafs’ salary cap, especially as the ceiling rises over the next few years. And while he’s 36 years old, the skillset the Leafs are buying isn’t one that will diminish with age. If it doesn’t work, he didn’t cost all that much. If it does work, he could be one of the most popular players in Toronto, the Tie Domi for a new era.
That’s the positive spin. Are you buying it?
My sense is that a lot of Leaf fans aren’t. Others are seeing that too. And that brings us to the second way of looking at this move.
That version starts like this: Ryan Reaves isn’t good. Aside from the intimidation factor, he doesn’t do enough to deserve a spot in a contending team’s lineup. And while he can fight, he doesn’t do it as often as you think. Maybe he doesn’t need to and that’s the whole point. But he can’t protect the Leafs stars from Matthew Tkachuk and Tom Wilson unless he’s on the ice with him, and he won’t be. When the playoffs arrive and the temperature goes up, is he going to scare anyone while he’s stapled to the bench?
Well, maybe. That’s the bet the Leafs are making. And they’re not the first because whatever else you think of Reaves’ numbers, he’s played a lot of playoff hockey over the years, for several teams. This isn’t a guy who gets banished to the press box as soon as the playoffs start. He’s seen the second round, more than once, and that alone makes him an outlier on this Leafs team.
Ryan Reaves for three years is too long.
Ryan Reaves at $1.3M is too much.
The surplus value listed here is generous because I created a lower limit that Reaves' play falls well below. pic.twitter.com/togsrfAu32— dom 📈 (@domluszczyszyn) July 1, 2023
In the end, your feelings about this signing probably come down to one question: What makes Ryan Reaves different from Wayne Simmonds and Kyle Clifford and Matt Martin and any number of other guys the Leafs have brought in over the years to try to do this job? All of those guys did their best and had their moments, and none of them moved the needle much in terms of making the Leafs a tougher team to play against. Now it’s Reaves’ turn, and maybe you think this time it works because he’s the scariest guy of the bunch. Or maybe you think it won’t because it’s not 1992 anymore and the old-school thinking hasn’t worked in a long time.
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The other name that matters here is Brad Treliving, the brand-new boss making his first marks on a roster that he doesn’t seem especially inclined to tear down. If this move happens under a GM who’d been on the job for a while, maybe you shrug. It’s a fourth-liner, settle down Toronto, not everything is a crisis. But we don’t have much to go on as far as how Treliving plans to approach this underachieving Leafs team. Everything will be under a microscope, at least until we get a sense of what he’s trying to do.
We know this: There are going to be moments when Leaf fans will love Ryan Reaves. In a long and drawn-out regular season that borders on meaningless, he’ll have his chance to give fans something to cheer about. If enough of those moments combine to somehow lead to a change in the atmosphere around the team, then maybe this works, or at least comes close enough that it’s fine.
The question is whether he can move the needle at all once the playoffs start. Other guys have tried. It never seems to work, not on this bunch. Treliving seems willing to try it again. Run it back, to borrow a turn of phrase. If it fails again, it won’t be because Reaves didn’t give it his all. It will be about the way Treliving has diagnosed his team, and what he thinks will fix it, and how he plans to attack the job.
We’ll know more about that in a few days than we do now. But we know a little bit, and that’s that Treliving is willing to use his precious cap space to try to buy something his new team has never been able to earn on its own. Let’s see if it works.
(Photo: David Berding / Getty Images)
Sean McIndoe has been a senior NHL writer with The Athletic since 2018. He launched Down Goes Brown in 2008 and has been writing about hockey ever since, with stops including Grantland, Sportsnet and Vice Sports. His book, "The Down Goes Brown History of the NHL," is available in book stores now. Follow Sean on Twitter @DownGoesBrown
