Maple Leafs Sign Nick Blankenburg To Pro Tryout (PTO)
On Monday afternoon, the Toronto Maple Leafs announced the signing of 28-year-old defenceman Nick Blankenburg to a professional tryout contract (PTO). This was perhaps the biggest show-of-proof yet that we’re getting close to the start of training camp, as teams start inviting a few extra competitors into the fold. Sometimes it’s a favour to a player or their agent, other times it’s an attempt to push the urgency of their current players in camp, and occasionally it’s an earnest attempt to add one more cheap roster player under the wire.
This one, well, I’m not 100% sure where this one falls under. It could be a favour, as Blankenburg is represented by Pat Brisson, who also represents John Tavares and rookie first-overall pick Gavin McKenna. Not to mention, Toronto just signed his son Brendan to what will likely be a tweener (bouncing between NHL and AHL) deal eleven days ago.
It could be an attempt to keep players honest, as Blankenburg fits a similar mould to guys like Troy Stecher and Emil Andrae – low cost, undersized, numbers-friendly depth guys. You don’t want anyone coming into camp thinking they have their spot in the bag, and he pushes that. It’s also totally possible that they think he’s a better option than both, and have a pathway to making room for him.
Blankenburg came into the NHL as an undrafted prospect, cutting his teeth in the NCAA with the University of Michigan. He played four years in yellow and blue, eventually captaining the team in his senior year, before signing with the Columbus Blue Jackets, who got to see him while monitoring the progress of teammate Kent Johnson… hey look, Brendan Brisson was also on that Michigan team.
Anyway, he found himself playing as a tweener with Columbus in pieces of the next three seasons, before leaving the team as a free agent in 2024 and signing with Nashville. The Predators gave him a more significant opportunity, starting his year in Milwaukee before coming up to the big club in late November and playing with the team full-time over the next 60 games. He played another 49 with the Predators this year before being traded in March to Colorado for a fifth-round pick. With the Avalanche, a much deeper team than the two that previously used him, his minutes cratered, going from 18-19 minutes a night to a little over 12 in the regular season and under ten with more scratches than appearances in the playoffs.
Blankenburg is well-liked within the analytics community – everyone loves seeing the little guy get a shot, his 27 points per 82 games in his career are very respectable, and his tracked microstats imply a player who is at least somewhat comfortable carrying and retrieving the puck, though the methods and success rates have varied a lot over the past couple years. Evolving Hockey’s model has him rated as worth double the goals above replacement of Andrae over the last three seasons, while rating Stecher as a below-replacement player. With that said, I’m given a little bit of pause by a chunk of that impact coming from penalty drawn/taken differential (something Toronto has historically struggled with as a team), and much of his impacts coming from even-strength offence, which isn’t really the primarly point on his scouting report.
I also have significant reservations about the fact that Colorado, one of the stat-savviest teams in the sport, was quick to toss him to the curb after adding him to their roster. Maybe that’s just a numbers game issue – Cale Makar, Devon Toews, Sam Malinski, Josh Manson, Brent Burns and Brett Kulak being ahead of you is an uphill battle – but you’d think that if he was closer to “diamond in the rough” than “guy”, he’d get an opportunity closer to what this same organization gave the likes of Toews and Malinski.
Looking in this direction is also the last show of non-confidence in the Toronto Marlies group that won the Calder Cup, as it pushes William Villeneuve’s odds of making the team even lower and, combined with the glut up front and in goal, basically assures that no one who was with that team full-time has any chance of starting with the big club this year.
Nevertheless, I can at least appreciate that the team is looking beyond big box-out guys – adding another depth player who isn’t scared of the puck to the competition is a positive step in process, no matter what happens with him. Whether he actually forces anyone out of the roster is a much bigger question.
For one, a fully healthy Toronto blue line already has Darren Raddysh, Morgan Rielly, Chris Tanev, Oliver Ekman-Larsson, Jake McCabe, and one other person on it. The Leafs presumably believe enough in Andrae to give him a chance if they traded Joseph Woll to get him, and the team is already pretty capped out, likely to need LTIR to get to $0 when all is said and done. It can correctly be pointed out that Tanev’s future is uncertain – he mentioned himself last week that he still hasn’t been cleared to play – but even if you get past the financial and lineup barriers, Toronto sits at 50 contracts already. They’ll need to trade someone or get some help from the waiver wire just to be in a position to sign Blankenburg if he were to prove himself in camp.
That’s not impossible – the team has a particular glut at the bottom of their forward group and would likely hope to trim some of that. I wonder about moving Dakota Joshua after using their LTIR in hopes of creating some buffer room, for example.
But if I had to guess, I wouldn’t get too attached here. There are too many hoops to consider before he can squeak into a contract and roster spot to consider his chances of making the team overly high. This feels more like a favour to Brisson – a chance for Blankenburg to audition himself in front of the biggest possible preseason audience – and an attempt to keep camp competitive, and if anything comes out of it that really forces their hand, it’s a bonus.
Training camp starts for the Leafs tomorrow, with their first preseason games coming on Saturday.
