The Leafs have a HUGE decision to make...

Toronto Maple Leafs are forced into a huge decision, and while all eyes have been on the new acquisitions, including Darren Raddiff, the new coaching staff, there is one name and a huge decision looming surrounding him that has huge implications as we inch closer and closer to the beginning of the regular season. We have some new updates that reveal some very interesting plans for Jim Hiller and his team. I'm going to break that down and discuss. More importantly, what it means going forward is we are just over a month and a couple weeks away from the beginning of the regular season, slightly over 50 days, and there are still a lot of questions with this team. I'm going to break all of it down, but before we get into it, a quick reminder to hit that subscribe button. You guys have been a piece of the support. Darius, we're going to be talking about a name today that we have not talked about very much on the channel because I guess we're catching up to a degree here, but there's been some interesting, you know, tweets about him and there's been some interesting reports. Let's just start with him now. It is no one else other than Easton Cowan. Now we're going to dive into a few different things in this video, but let's just start with this. He's obviously in year two of three. Last year played most of the year, got healthy scratch a little bit there, but there is a lot of question marks now that have started to come up surrounding where he's going to play on this team. Some people questioning if he should even be in the lineup to begin the season because of how deep this team is, though I think he ultimately will. There's some looming questions surrounding his impact, both positively and potentially negatively given the amount of depth that they have now with obviously you got Nick Paul coming in. You have Steven Lorenz who's on the sidelines today, Bluger. He's going to have to play well to earn his spot, and I don't think people are necessarily talking about it enough. If he performs really, really well, it's one of the better top sixes in the NHL. If he struggles, there's no immediate replacement there for him on the second line, unless you want to look at some other guys that would mess up the rest of the lines like Jack Ross. If it could work as well, but still a lot of questions surrounding Easton Cowan. Yeah, a lot of questions, and we really haven't talked about him like you mentioned this summer, right? Like he's kind of fallen by the wayside, and you know, when you look at everything that he's done to this point in his career, he has a very impressive resume. Obviously, you know, the OHL completely dominated in his time there. Just last season, spent most of the season with the Leafs like you mentioned, and then he wins the Calder Cup with the Toronto Marlies, and he was one of their best players while playing hurt. I don't know if a lot of people remember that, but he got hurt, and he wasn't really healthy the rest of the way, but he made his way back into the lineup, finished the playoffs, and did look like he was continuing to get better every single round, every single game, and he was a difference maker one way or another. Whether he was putting the puck in the back of the net, or if he was setting up plays, whether it was his physicality, he was making himself useful, and I think players that know how to do that and understand how to do that are very valuable. Not only that, he's an absolute dog. He reminds me a little bit of, if everyone can remember, Sandin, a little bit with his body positioning, how he can throw reverse hits, and how he protects the puck a little bit where, you know, they're not the biggest guys, but you're like, wow, okay, they're pretty strong, and they can actually protect the puck pretty well. So I think the biggest question mark, and you outlined it a little bit, Nick, going into next year, is where does Easton Cowan fit into this lineup? If you look at, you know, everything they've done, they've added right shots, which is something we were talking about, you know, throughout the summer, leading to this point that last year, the entire team, especially the forwards, shot left, right? Like, you have to have a little bit of versatility, you know, in your lineup. So we'll see, ultimately, where he ends up. Right now, he's slotted in, at least on Puckpedia, on the second line. I was looking at some of the analytics because I remember him, Tavares, and Nylander near the end of the season playing very well. In the large sample size, like if you look at them playing together, not the greatest advanced analytics, but to end the season, they did actually look pretty good together. So I wonder if he sticks in that top six. If you look at it, I mean, Nyes can maybe move down, maybe Roslevic goes up on one of the top two lines on that right wing, although Nylander, I don't see him moving from the right side. So maybe on the top line with Matthews, maybe they try something like that with McKenna. I think McKenna, for the time being, unless it absolutely does not work, is going to be playing with Auston Matthews on the top line, unless proven otherwise. Again, it just doesn't work. But Cowan, man, he's been having a great summer, he has a great resume, and I think it's possible he can end up on that second line with Tavares and Nylander because the only guy at this point that can maybe beat him out is Nyes if they move him down to that slot, or maybe Nick Paul, but I think Nick Paul is going to be playing on the third line. Yeah, and obviously you'd see here he's having, like you mentioned, a good summer, the vibes are pretty high. And you look at it in the sense of, we talked about it on the channel, that a lot of people, I mean, myself included, thought that they should get two top six guys, one of them being McKenna, the other one being someone else. Now, they didn't do that, and the reason I thought that is because you take a bit of pressure off of Easton Cowan now, moving things around, they're probably going to rock with Easton Cowan on the second line to start, or maybe it's Jack Russell, but Cowan's down there on the third line. But with all the conversations that have been about the additions to the team, I mean, obviously, it's a brand new front office, it was probably the biggest change in an offseason for any They still, we don't really know what their actual plan is. We haven't heard much from Jim Hiller and what his plan is surrounding the team, obviously that's going to be happening over the next month or so, but it's been very quiet in that regard, which leaves us to obviously speculate about it. You can see here, everyone talks about Gavin McKenna joining the Leafs, Austin Matthews bouncing back, but I'm looking forward to year two of Easton Cowan. Have a feeling this guy's going to pop and put his name on the NHL map in a big way. Let's go, Cowboy. If he does pop and he plays really well, you have a, I mean, McKenna and Cowan, they have the potential to be an extremely good tandem, whether McKenna, I mean, McKenna's only 21 or sorry, Cowan's only 21 years old, right? And obviously there's going to be a lot more pressure. He had a great rookie season. There was ups, there was downs, but overall he remained steady, but we haven't heard much about Jim Hiller on the actual side of, and of course we will, I'm not saying it's unusual. There's just a lot of players that are decent and outside of the main guys, there's not a surefire, you know, second, you know, top six guy there. I'm a little bit worried about that if we're being honest, but I do ultimately think if Cowan plays well, or maybe even Rostovic, they're clearly putting a lot of faith in existing guys that they have on the team now. But I don't know, the more you look at it, it's going to require some very big play from young players like McKenna and his rookie year and Gavin and Easton Cowan in his second season. They're definitely going to have to bank on that, right? Like, I don't think you're wrong. And I think that's a question that a lot of people are asking themselves this summer. Again, we haven't really talked about Easton Cowan, but it's a question that I've asked myself too, like how much are they expecting of the kid? But one thing that I've thought about as well, because Easton Cowan, I don't really want to dump on Craig Berube, I don't want to make it about that, but one thing that he spoke about and, you know, the fact that he was healthy scratch last year, a couple of times and what Craig Berube spoke about, you know, Easton Cowan, I feel like at times with certain players, you know, it was the square peg with a round hole thing, right? Where it's like, hey, we know what your skillset is, but this is what we do here. And I think that that can work to a degree, but what Craig Berube was trying to do with this team simply did not work. And that's why he's not here anymore, right? Jim Hiller, you know, if you look at LA, the team is not as talented as the Maple Leafs. I think that there's way more skill on the Maple Leafs, especially offensively. And, you know, a lot of people make out, you know, the thing about him using the 131 in LA and stuff like that. He was just using a system that worked for the roster that he had, right? So in theory, coming here and, you know, making guys more offensive and having a more offensive game plan, maybe that can bring Cowan to another level where it's like, hey, all that stuff that you do, forget about that. Do X, Y, and Z, right? No, like now it's going to be okay. Maybe we're working with certain players on, you know, their strengths, right? Something that John Cooper does. And that's why I think Tampa is so successful and why even Darren Radish, you know, found success last year. It's like, hey, what are you good at? How can we fit that into this team, right? He does that so well as a coach. I'm not saying Jim Hiller is John Cooper, but they can do a little bit of that here with Easton Cowan. There's no reason to believe that he can't make a, you know, pretty significant leap, right? And he's found success at every single level that he's played. Literally the most success that you could find at every level besides winning the Stanley Cup already. So I'm very excited to see what he does next year. Is he going to be a top end elite, you know, top six player? I don't know. We haven't necessarily seen it yet, but I know that he is going to have a good season. I'm excited to see what he does. You know, is it 80 points? Is it 70 points? I don't know. But I think that he can get up to 60 points. If you look at how disappointing last year was in the fact that he was in and out of the lineup, the fact that he was moved around the lineup and he still put up as many points as he did. I'm feeling pretty good about this player. Yeah. Half of your forward group is completely different. Six out of 12 players on the offensive side are brand new. So it's going to be interesting to see what on earth they do. Or maybe it's five. I think I included regardless. No, it is six. I'm right. I'm counting there. That is an insane amount of change. So comment down below what your thoughts are on that. And most importantly, leave your point prediction for Eason Cowan down below 29 points last year. What do they need from him to get from a nonplayoff team back into the race? Comment down below. Go ahead. 55 points. Yeah, 55. I'm going to go. I'm going to go with 50. I'm going to be a little bit more slightly more reasonable. But I mean, we all talk about Gavin McKenna, you know, how great of a season he's going to have. There's just as much of a chance for Eason Cowan, I think, to have arguably just as good of a season. But that's obviously going to be tough. Any final thoughts? Yeah, I would guess 55 points for him, maybe 60 points, something like that. If you look at last season and how horrible of a season it was. And again, all these factors that I just mentioned, he still put up, you know, basically 30 points. Pretty impressive. And then you have Gavin McKenna, too, who I think is a better hockey player. So he's going to be out there, right? Like maybe power play, you know, as the season goes on to start, I would imagine he won't be on the power play. A lot of people think I'm crazy for that. I not to start. I don't know. I think it's going to be a lot of five on five for him. But we'll see. You know, I think it's there's a lot of room for optimism this year because everything that we saw before, like you can only base Easton Cowan and his NHL performance on what we saw last year because he's only played one year and there's a new system, new coaching coming in. Half the roster is different, right? So I'm really looking forward to it. And the other thing, too, you know, half the roster is different. There's going to be a different feel to it, right? There's going to be different tools that Jim Hiller can use. So I'm feeling pretty optimistic about it. But at the same time, you know, it's a tough division. So we'll see how they fare. But I think that they're definitely going to have a better season than last year.