Scott Laughton was a polarizing figure in his first few months as a Toronto Maple Leaf. The team paid a lot to get him, and to make matters worse, he struggled offensively and never truly found his footing with the club in 2024-25. But, that would have looked much worse had he been a rental. In his second year as a Leaf and the final one of his current contract, Laughton has emerged into the effective middle-six forward and fan favourite the team was hoping he would be.
While his ten points in 33 games this season aren’t anything that will wow you, eight of those ten points are goals, and his excellent performance on the defensive side of the puck have made those limited offensive totals easily forgettable. He’s scored three times in his past five games, and yet, on Friday night against the Vegas Golden Knights, Laughton registered only 9:28 of time on ice (TOI). And this was one of the games he scored in.
His lack of usage in that game particularly was mind-boggling, and even in the games where he’s closer to his average TOI of 14:39, he hasn’t been given a look anywhere outside of the fourth line, even with William Nylander and Dakota Joshua out of the lineup. So, why? Especially in the context of the three-game losing streak the Maple Leafs are on, why is Laughton not being given a shot higher in the lineup?
Head coach Craig Berube was asked about Laughton’s limited usage at practice on Saturday and said that he was making an effort to run the top two lines more often in an effort to get back in the game.
“Well, he’s been playing 14 minutes a night for the most part,” Berube said. “Last night, we were down in the game, I went with two lines in that second period a little bit to get caught up. That’s what happened there.”
In a vacuum, Berube’s rationale makes sense. Every coach shortens their bench when you desperately need a boost of offence. But this begs another question – why is Laughton never considered for a promotion into the top six?
Over the past couple of weeks, he has demonstrated an ability to not only score goals, but score them at crucial times. His breakaway goal against Vegas helped get them back into the game. He scored what should have been an insurance goal in their last meeting with the Golden Knights before the team blew the lead (and he wasn’t on the ice for either Vegas goal that followed his). And it’s not like playing in the top-six is a foreign concept to him. He was frequently one of the Flyers’ top candidates to jump onto one of the top lines when he was in Philadelphia, and he’s scored as many as 18 goals in a season for them.
Sure, maybe it’s a little bit of a questionable call to promote him in favour of somebody like Matthew Knies, but why are players like Bobby McMann, who has the same amount of goals as Laughton in his last ten games, or Max Domi, who has two goals in his last 15? To Domi’s credit, he has eight assists in that span, but their production alongside Auston Matthews has been far from consistent, or at bare minimum not consistent enough to warrant shielding them from any changes.
Laughton was visibly frustrated about the Maple Leafs’ lack of urgency following Friday’s game against the Vegas Golden Knights. He’s far too good a teammate and too humble to ever raise any concerns about his ice time, but he seemed to have a pretty solid grasp on why the Leafs let that game slip away from them so early for a guy who played under ten minutes.
“It’s simplicity, too. I mean, your D are tired,” Laughton said. “You don’t need to come back with the puck and make it harder. You chip pucks in, you fill lanes, you make it easy on your D, and you make it hard. That’s how you win at this time of year, and that’s how you win in the playoffs.”
The Maple Leafs currently sit five points back of the Boston Bruins for the second wildcard spot, and they have to take on the juggernaut of the league in the Colorado Avalanche in their next opportunity to gain some ground. As time ticks by and and days pass with fewer and fewer opportunities to gain said ground, the least the Leafs can do is give one of, if not their biggest heart and soul guy a proper shot higher in the lineup. Or, at bare minimum, don’t keep his ice time below double digits in a game he contributed to.
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