Morgan Rielly's 14th Toronto Season Starts Behind Darren Raddysh

Morgan Rielly is about to begin his 14th season with the Toronto Maple Leafs. For most of the past twelve months, the working assumption around the league has been that he would not get to start it there.

The Hockey News’s Adam Proteau reported this week that the speculation has not produced a move, and that Toronto expects to open 2026-27 with Rielly on its top defensive pairing alongside newcomer Darren Raddysh. Rielly addressed his own situation at the Hockey Night in Brampton charity event on Wednesday, and Proteau’s read of it was straightforward: you could see how much he valued being a Maple Leaf.

Thirteen years in the hardest market to stay in

Proteau’s framing is worth keeping. It is rare for any NHL player to spend thirteen years in one market. Doing it in Toronto, where the roster has been rebuilt around him more than once, is rarer still. Rielly was drafted in 2012 and has been a fixture through every version of the team since.

The trade speculation was never really about performance. It was about a club that finished 32-36-14, last in the Atlantic, ending a nine-year playoff run, and a general manager arriving with a mandate. John Chayka was hired on May 3 after Brad Treliving was fired March 30, and a long-tenured defenceman with term is the sort of asset a new front office is expected to at least price.

The Raddysh signing changes the job description

What appears to have settled it is the arrival of the man beside him. Raddysh came from Tampa Bay on an eight-year sign-and-trade, one of only seven eight-year contracts handed out league-wide this summer before the new collective bargaining agreement cuts the maximum term on Sept. 15. He is 30, and he scored 22 goals and 70 points in Tampa.

That deal made Raddysh the club’s highest-paid blueliner, and Proteau’s point is that expectations shift with the money. The spotlight moves to Raddysh, which lets Rielly operate more in the background than he has been able to since he was drafted, a genuinely different working environment for a player who has carried the position’s public burden in Toronto for over a decade.

Proteau is careful not to overstate it. Rielly is not going to be a ghost in the room, and the Maple Leafs will need a bounce-back from him.

What it means for the rest of the summer

A top pairing that is settled in August is not a top pairing that is settled in February. Rielly’s name will reappear if Toronto is out of it by the deadline, and the same logic that made him a candidate in June will apply again with a worse market attached.

The rest of Chayka’s first summer went in the other direction entirely: Sergei Bobrovsky on three years and $21 million, Nick Paul from Tampa Bay, Jack Roslovic at $4 million per season, Colton Sissons, Teddy Blueger, Brandon Duhaime, and Gavin McKenna with the first overall pick. That is a club adding, not subtracting.

For now, the answer to the loudest question of Toronto’s offseason is that nothing happened, and the reason nothing happened is that somebody else was hired to be the story.

Odds and market references describe the situation at the time of writing. You must meet the legal gambling age in your province or territory. See responsible gambling.