Even after the Mitch Marner saga, player agent Darren Ferris says it’s business as usual with Toronto Maple Leafs general manager Brad Treliving.

The agent appeared on the 100% Hockey Podcast with Daren Millard and John Shannon last week to discuss Marner’s departure from the Maple Leafs and his arrival with the Vegas Golden Knights after a sign-and-trade in late June.

Toronto and Marner agreed to an eight-year, $96 million contract before sending him to Vegas in exchange for Nicolas Roy. Marner’s exit from the Maple Leafs was, and still is, a massive talking point amongst fans within Toronto.

However, during the interview with Millard and Shannon, Ferris indicated that nothing had changed within the relationship between the agent and GM, adding that the two had spoken about a free agent recently.

“[The relationship is] still cordial. I’ve known Brad quite a while. He’s a good man, and he’s got a tough job in front of him. Toronto’s not an easy organization to work in with all the noise on the outside, but he seems to weather it. Everything’s fine between us,” said Ferris. 

“We were talking about a free agent that I have currently that’s still out there, just recently acquired, and we just had a discussion, and we continue to, I mean, it’s business as usual.”

Among the free agents still available under Ferris is defenseman Matt Grzelcyk. The 31-year-old is coming off a full season with the Pittsburgh Penguins, where he tallied one goal and 40 points while averaging 20:37 of ice time on the blue line.

Grzelcyk had the second most points among Penguins defensemen, and if he were on the Maple Leafs, he’d have been one point off Morgan Rielly for the team lead. This past season with Pittsburgh was his best year to date, as he registered career highs in assists and average ice time.

Would bringing in Grzelcyk make sense for Toronto?

If there’s anything different about the upcoming season for the Maple Leafs, it’s the amount of quality defensemen they already have within the organization.

Any team, of course, would love to have as many defenders as possible, just in case injuries pop up, and the Maple Leafs have that. They’ve got the six defensemen (Rielly, Brandon Carlo, Chris Tanev, Jake McCabe, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, and Simon Benoit) who just helped push the Stanley Cup Champion Florida Panthers to seven games.

Toronto has also brought in Henry Thrun from the San Jose Sharks in the Ryan Reaves trade, plus they have Matt Benning, Dakota Mermis, Philippe Myers, Marshall Rifai, and William Villeneuve waiting in the ranks.

The only reason Toronto should bring Grzelcyk in is if they’re afraid of losing a couple of defensemen to waivers at the beginning of the season, which could very well occur. 

Benning has mentioned he’d like a chance in the NHL with the Maple Leafs, or elsewhere. He could be a candidate to move if he has a strong training camp with Toronto and doesn’t make the team. 

The Maple Leafs kept Myers as depth for most of last season, which I’d assume they’d do again after signing him to a two-year, $1.7 million contract in January. I could see them doing that with Thrun instead, depending on which player has a better training camp.

Adding Grzelcyk wouldn’t necessarily be a bad move, especially if he comes in on a professional tryout, similar to how Max Pacioretty and Steven Lorentz did last training camp. As it stands currently, though, the Maple Leafs have $1,919,722 in cap space, according to PuckPedia.com.

Would you rather see Toronto spend that on another depth defender like Grzelcyk, with the chance of losing a couple of defensemen at the start of the season to waivers? Or would you like to see Treliving keep that money for an addition at the trade deadline?

Either way, these last few weeks before training camp could be fascinating to watch if you’re a fan of the Maple Leafs.

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When St-Georges native Joshua Roy turned up at the CN Sports Complexe in Brossard for training camp last season, he was pencilled in to make the Montreal Canadiens’ roster. But when the players hit the ice, it became apparent that the likes of Emil Heineman and Oliver Kapanen were outperforming him. A couple of weeks later, he landed in the AHL with the Laval Rocket, where he spent much of the last season, putting up 35 points in 47 games. In the 12 games he played in the NHL, he added two goals and failed to make much of an impact.

TVA Sports’ Nicolas Cloutier published an article on Tuesday morning about Roy’s training this Summer, including quotes from the man he put in charge of his very own rebuild: John Chaimberg. The trainer has worked with big names in the past, such as Georges St-Pierre and Kristopher Letang. Roy had to audition for Chaimberg to agree to train him.

Cloutier reports that the training has borne fruit; Roy’s weight has gone from 204 pounds to just 190, and he feels much better for it. He was told at the end of the season that he needed to bring more pace to his game, and he took the comments to heart. His summer coach raves about his work ethic and his improvement in the gym over the offseason, calling him the MVP of their summer.

It will be interesting to see how the leaner version of Roy performs at training camp. Getting a roster spot won’t be easy. While the man who pushed him out of the lineup last season is gone (Heineman was sent to the New York Islanders in the Noah Dobson trade), he has since been replaced by sophomore Zachary Bolduc (in a trade with the St. Louis Blues), who comes to town with an impressive resume and high expectations.

If Roy can bring the same dedication to the ice as he showed in his training session in the gym this summer, he could certainly put up a good fight. With Christian Dvorak and Joel Armia moving on, there will be roles available up front, but the 22-year-old will also need to outperform Joe Veleno and Samuel Blais, two players who are older and desperate to show that they belong in the NHL.

Veleno is a former first-round pick who was tagged with “exceptional status” back in 2015, which allowed him to play in the QMJHL at just 15 years of age. He willingly confesses that he might have taken his foot off the pedal at that point. In the NHL, he failed to make an impact with the Detroit Red Wings, who eventually traded him to the Chicago Blackhawks in March 2025. His stay in Illinois was short-lived, however, since he was traded to the Seattle Kraken this offseason before being bought out. He came to Montreal as a free agent on a one-year, one-way deal with a $900,000 AAV, which is a significant pay cut, and he’ll be eager to prove that he’s better than that.

As for Blais, he has played part of eight seasons in the NHL and even won the Stanley Cup with the Blues in 2018-19, but has never been able to establish himself as an NHLer and play a complete season. He spent the entire last campaign in the AHL with the Abbotsford Canucks, winning the AHL Playoffs and scoring 19 points in 23 games on top of being assessed 70 penalty minutes. He also joined the Habs on a one-year, one-way deal, but on a league minimum $775,000 AAV.

Roy will be desperate as well, though. He’s about to embark on the last year of his ELC contract, and he needs to show that he belongs, if not in the Canadiens’ organisation, at least in professional hockey. At the end of the upcoming season, he will be an RFA with a $813,750 qualifying offer, according to Puckpedia. If he wants to secure a more valuable contract, he needs to make an impact now. It appears he has taken the necessary steps to do so this summer, but it remains to be seen how all that work will translate on the ice.

Of course, he’ll also need to outperform youngsters like Oliver Kapanen and Owen Beck. Kapanen started the season in Montreal last year before being loaned back to his European team, Timra IK in Sweden, where he played a significant role, getting plenty of ice-time not only at even strength, but also on special teams. He took part in three playoff games with the Canadiens, picking up an assist in minimal ice time.

As for Beck, he skated in 12 games with the Canadiens last year, all in the regular season, and grabbed a single assist. At 21 years old and with two years left on his ELC, he has time on his side, and there’s no need to rush his development.

As Martin St-Louis would say, there are chairs available in his lineup, and it will be interesting to see which of the players mentioned above manages to step up and not only grab one, but keep it.

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