The 2025/26 Toronto Maple Leafs have come alive. Over the past three weeks, Toronto has turned its season from hell into one of hope. The team has gone 8-1-2 since assistant coach Marc Savard was fired on December 22nd and is finally playing a style of hockey that suits the players on its roster.
Admittedly, I do not come with stats to back this up, but having watched almost every single minute of Leaf hockey this season, it is clear to see that over this winning stretch, the team is placing more emphasis on exiting and entering zones with control rather than flipping pucks out of their defensive zone and dumping pucks into the offensive zone.
They have also done a much better job of late of sustaining zone time and using off-puck movement to create high-quality chances. The Leafs are finally using their speed in transition more too. To start the year, Toronto looked slowww, but when I look at their lineup, it isn’t a roster full of players that scream low-event, low-pace hockey. Watching the Leafs keep up with Colorado as they did on Monday night for the most part, it’s clear this team can attack and defend with speed. That it took until late December for the Leafs’ playstyle to align with their roster is an indictment of Craig Berube, but he also deserves credit for making adjustments before it was too late.
Lastly, the biggest reason the Leafs can even consider acquiring Dougie Hamilton for a playoff push is the play of captain Auston Matthews. Matthews has looked dominant over his past ten games, scoring eight times and being the most dangerous player on the ice almost every shift. He’s generated 55 scoring chances since December 23rd, 24 more than any other Leaf over that span, with 25 of those chances being high danger opportunities. Matthews can turn Toronto from a bubble team into a potential contender in the wide-open Eastern Conference if he continues to play as he did during his 60-goal seasons.
Another player who could help turn the Leafs into a contender in the East is Dougie Hamilton. Hamilton’s name has been in trade rumours for more than a month now, as it became public that the New Jersey Devils asked him to waive his no-trade clause in an effort to create cap space for a Quinn Hughes trade. Hamilton didn’t waive, and also reportedly vetoed a trade to the San Jose Sharks last summer as the Devils tried and continue to try to move his $9m annual cap hit. Before diving into his potential fit with Toronto, let’s look at why the Devils are so desperate to get rid of Hamilton, and what value he still brings to an NHL lineup.
The Situation
The simplest reason New Jersey wants to trade Hamilton is that cap hit I referenced earlier. At the age of 32, Hamilton has just five goals and thirteen points in 42 games, and $9m is a lot of money for an aging defenseman that doesn’t generate goals or points. The Devils have a lot of holes, and a lot of NHL-calibre defenseman, too many in fact. If they were able to clear Hamilton’s money, it would relieve them of a logjam on defence and give them room to make additions up front.
The Devils pay Hamilton to be their bona fide number one defenseman, and at this point in his career, that probably isn’t something he’s capable of. The 32-year-old has just three goals and three assists at five-on-five this season and is producing just 0.81 points per 60, which ranks as the lowest mark of his career. In the last three years before this one, Hamilton generated 1.89, 2.29 and 2.49 points per 60, respectively. The former Calgary Flame has also seen quite the uptick in giveaways over the last two seasons, going from 2.49 turnovers per 60 in 23/24 to 4.4 in 24/25 and 4.44 per hour so far this season. Perhaps a sign that the game is starting to move a little faster for him than it used to.
Hamilton, a stalwart on the team’s first power play throughout his career, has lost his stranglehold on that spot over the last two seasons, with the Devils placing their trust in 22-year-old Luke Hughes to run their PP (Hughes also makes $9M). That doesn’t mean Hamilton couldn’t be the power-play quarterback for another team, but it is another reason why the Devils might see him as surplus to requirements.
The Player
On the more positive side, Hamilton still seems to drive play at a solid rate, and the Devils have been a much worse team statistically without Hamilton on the ice. The former first-round pick has always been an analytics darling, and this season is no different. Hamilton’s expected goals share is near 54% at five-on-five, meaning his team generates 54 percent of the scoring chances when he’s on the ice. New Jersey has a 44% xGF share with Hamilton on the bench. This is not a player who is drowning defensively or kills any offensive possession when the puck hits his stick; he can still keep up and be effective. He’s not perfect in his own zone but the offensive upside and puck moving skills outweigh his defensive fragilities.
One of the few stats the Devils are better at without Hamilton on the ice is shooting percentage, which suggests that Hamilton’s lacklustre point production is in part due to bad luck. When Hamilton has been on the ice, his team’s shooting percentage is just 6.83, by far the lowest of his career and well below New Jersey’s overall shooting percentage of 8.73. That’s not to say Hamilton hasn’t underperformed expectations this year, but it does provide some colour on what has been a nightmarish season for the defenseman. In the right situation, with better shooting talent around him and stable goaltending, I think Hamilton is primed to start producing again.
If the reporting is to be believed, it seems that the Devils essentially just want to get rid of Hamilton’s contract, which creates a unique buying opportunity for a team that can make the money work but doesn’t have a lot of valuable assets to trade.
The Fit
That leads us to the Leafs and the potential acquisition of Hamilton, who would seemingly slide in seamlessly to replace the injured Chris Tanev as Toronto’s top right-handed defenseman. It’s been reported by a few people now that Brad Treliving is interested in trying to make a Hamilton trade work. Obviously, the biggest hurdle in making a move for Toronto is Hamilton’s cap hit. The Leafs aren’t as tight against the cap as they have been in years past, but they don’t have much flexibility either.
Currently sitting at around $3.4M in trade deadline cap space, Treliving could open up another $3.8M if he is willing to put Tanev on long-term injured reserve, effectively ending the defenseman’s season. In doing so, that would bring the Leafs up to roughly $7.2M in total cap space and open up a deal for Hamilton in which the Devils retain some of his contract or take salary back (Max Domi?) from the Leafs. Either way, the point is it’s entirely feasible for Toronto to make the money work if this is something they really want to do.
Hamilton is exactly the type of player Toronto has needed for years. As Morgan Rielly’s puck-moving capabilities have declined year over year since his new contract kicked in, Toronto has lacked a reliable offensive defenseman who can create easy offence and kickstart transitions for the team’s elite talent with one pass. Hamilton would instantly become the guy Berube would throw out if the Leafs need a goal late or have a chance to be aggressive on an offensive zone draw. He’s also 6’6 and can skate, a profile that fits exactly what Treliving has been chasing during his time as Leafs GM.
Adding the former All-Star would allow the rest of the Buds’ defence to slide down into positions on the depth chart that are more suited to their strengths. A first pair of Hamilton and Jake McCabe would be more than strong enough to take care of the opposing team’s top lines, giving Berube flexibility with second and third pairings of Rielly-Brendan Carlo and Oliver Ekman-Larsson paired with Troy Stecher. Simon Benoit then becomes good depth, and it ensures that Phillipe Myers never plays another game for the hockey club again, which is really the only thing all Leaf fans want.
Hamilton’s aforementioned power play abilities are incredibly enticing for the Leafs as well. Rielly’s lack of shooting threat and poor decision-making is increasingly hurting Toronto’s top power play, and this year is the starkest example of that. Berube and his staff know Rielly isn’t the ideal choice to run their power play; they showed as much last year, choosing to go with five forwards for most of the season.
On the power play over the last three seasons, Hamilton has been on the ice for 11.17 goals for per hour compared to Rielly’s 9.63. His addition would give the Leafs a new weapon and add a dimension to their power play they have not had since before Matthews was drafted.
I don’t think this is a year where Treliving has to be aggressive at the trade deadline. Despite their recent hot streak, his hockey team haven’t shown enough over the totality of the season to demonstrate that they are worth trading the few future assets Toronto still has to try and win a Cup.
However, Hamilton makes perfect sense because the Leafs have so little to trade. The Devils won’t give him away for free, but if you gave them a second-round pick, a fourth-rounder and say, Calle Jarnkrok’s expiring contract to help make the money work, would that be enough? Could New Jersey also retain 15% of Hamilton’s contract? I think you really have to test how badly the Devils want to get out of this deal. Hamilton is not a rental either; he has two more years on his deal after this one.
I obviously have no idea what the exact price for Hamilton would look like or how they’d make the cap hit work. I will leave that up to Brad Treliving and Tom Fitzgerald to figure out. But as long as the Leafs don’t have to trade Easton Cowan, Ben Danford, and any first-round picks, then I’d say you have to figure out a way to make Dougie Hamilton a Leaf.
This is the type of trade that extends the Leafs’ Cup window and fills a massive hole on the blueline without mortgaging key future assets.
The Morning Skate 