It's that time of year again. The days are getting shorter. The temperatures are getting cooler. The hockey season is right around the corner, and the first thing to kick off the pre-season festivities is the prospect tournament that always takes place on the weekend I celebrate my anniversary with my wife. Sigh...

Today, Toronto released their roster:

All of the prospects you may expect to be included will be here. The only exceptions are those guys who were not going to get much of a look at the NHL training camp anyway, and whose regular seasons already started in Europe. No point in having them miss those more meaningful games, so sorry to those who were hoping to see the likes of Mans Gudmunsson, Yaroslav Fedoseyev, or Juuso Ainasto in action.

The same thing applies to their NCAA guys like Moldenhauer, Olsen, Belle, or MacKenzie. Their season hasn't started yet, but since the school year has only just started they don't want to miss the start of their classes and their first practices with their college teams. Sometimes college guys have participated in this in the past, but it's usually rare from what I remember.

Other than that, we have our fanciest of new boys in Gavin McKenna headlining Toronto's prospect roster along with our other top prospects like Tinus Luc Koblar (the likely 1C), Miroslav Holinka, Ben Danford, Alex Bilecki and a couple of European goalies we haven't seen much of in Timofei Obvintsev and Patriks Plumins.

I won't add much commentary to the players Toronto already has drafted or signed, since anything I could say about them has already been said. Instead, I'll talk a bit about the few free agent invites they have on the roster.

Parker Vaughan

Quite young since he only just went undrafted this past summer, Vaughan was an invite to Toronto's development camp back in July. I wrote a bit about him twice, both when assessing how interesting any of the invites were to that camp and then after when talking about the standouts.

Scouting Toronto’s 2026 Development Camp Roster
Toronto invited 26 undrafted prospects to their July 2026 development camp this year. I’m looking at them all to see who could be interesting as potential future signing or draft targets.
PPP LeafsBrian S
Standouts From The 2026 Development Camp
Another development camp come and gone, but this year featured a much bigger influx of talented new prospects in many years. Who among them all stood out the most?
PPP LeafsBrian S

Not to overstate how good he looked, but I thought he didn't look out of place among the other 18 year olds from the same draft year. He played on a line with two other guys his age, Zach Olsen and Cooper Williams. He'll probably only play in one game, and I believe they're close to the max on the SPC limit so I'm doubtful they sign him unless he really blows their socks off. It will be a challenge for him to play against the better and mostly older prospects of the other teams he'll face.

Nic Whitehead

Whitehead is a 5'10" centre who is a year older than Vaughan, so he's entering his D+2 season this year. He's a Florida boy from Orlando, but he played in the OHL the past three years. Last year he had his best season by far, netting 25 goals and 63 points in 64 games. That's good but not great for a D+1 prospect, especially when you're undersized. I remember seeing him a bit while following some other prospects – like McCue when he was there, or some prospects for the draft. He's a solid junior guy but I am expecting less of him than I do of Vaughan.

Matyas Man

He's a 6'5" left shot defenseman from Czechia who played in the WHL last year as a D+2 player. He's old enough to turn pro even if he was a local boy aging out of junior. He has good mobility for his size, plays a very physical game, but didn't show much of an offensive game on a Prince Albert team that was deep enough to lose in the WHL finals. He has okay ability moving the puck, but he definitely is more of a defense-first (and only) type. He was another guy invited to the Dev camp this summer, and he had two assists in the exhibition game. I didn't write any notes about him as a standout but I did notice him in a mildly positive sense a couple of times. He will be looking for an AHL/ECHL deal at this point, and like the other free agent invites I'm guessing he only plays in one game this weekend.

Sebastian Charvát

Charvát is a 6'5" goalie from Czechia who is only 18 years old, like Parker Vaughan. He's played his whole life in Czechia junior to date, but like many other top goalies from his country is coming to North America next year to play for Waterloo in the USHL. He's been one of his country's backups in international play the past two years, but his numbers in junior have been okay on what looks to be some bad or at least below average teams. From the few scouting reports I can see of him, aside from being big and showing some athleticism, he doesn't grade out that well in terms of his reads, processing, working through screens, puck tracking, positioning on the post, and quickness in shifting positions. So we'll see how he looks in whatever playing time he gets.

Forecasting the Lines

If Toronto follows their usual M.O. from the past few years, they will load up the top line. I'm guessing they will do the same thing as from the Development Camp, which means reuniting McKenna-Koblar-Nansi.

Outside of that, they have five other guys who are who I would classify as 'natural' centers. So expect one or two of them to play only one game and/or get shifted to the wing... especially since they have a lot more right shot wingers than left ones while all but one of the centers are lefties.

So here's what I am both guessing and what I would do for the forward lines, with the bottom two lines being the guys that only get in one game and take the other's place:

McKenna - Koblar - Nansi
Kirwan - Holinka - Buhr
Sim - Haymes - Valis
Whitehead - Hopkins - Pepoy
Boulton - Williams - Vaughan

Honestly for the bottom two of those five lines, you can mix and match them however you want since all of them are relatively young and/or relatively low as far as prospect rankings are concerned. I kept Vaughan with Williams since they played together in the Development Camp exhibition. Boulton is a psycho who spends more time serving penalties and suspensions than on the ice but he's going to get into at least one game since he's on the roster.

On defense, there is a similar number of defensemen to equal one extra pairing. So expect the 'bottom' two of those four to be swapped between games. At least with the defensemen, they have an even number of lefties and righties. So if I were to guess the pairings...

Bilecki - Danford
Chadwick - Hundley
Smith - Borgesi
Man - Fellinger

If they decide to 'load up' on the pairings like they have done with the top forward line, that would mean a Bilecki-Danford duo that, I think, would be a LOT of fun. Both have different strengths and weaknesses that could compliment each other, but they're also both such good and mobile skaters that they're delightful to watch just move around the ice. The only reason I think they may not do this is because Bilecki is still pretty young, and isn't a prospect anywhere near the level of a McKenna. On the other hand, the rest of the lefties aren't exactly a murderer's row.

It's sad to say that, of these eight defensemen, Fellinger is probably the guy I'm interested in the third most. But the right side is 'deeper' than the left, so while I would have loved to put him with Chadwick so his skating and defense could potentially cover for those deficiencies. But since he's the youngest I'm guessing he plays on one of the bottom two pairings that only plays in one game.

For the goalies, who the hell knows. They have two guys they drafted in Obvintsev and Plumins, but Plumins is quite young – and so is their invite, Charvát. So I would guess that Obvintsev as the oldest gets one full game, and the other is split between the other two.

I look forward to watching the replays when I return from my anniversary weekend!

Maple Leafs Prospects