The Toronto Maple Leafs want Auston Matthews carrying the puck less this season, and the roster around him is being built to make it happen.
Elliotte Friedman laid it out on 32 Thoughts, and it was making the rounds Monday morning. A couple of other teams who scouted Toronto are seeing the same thing.
The goal, per Friedman, is to turn Matthews into a shooter and a puck hunter. Let everybody else handle the heavy lifting.
And the kicker? Friedman says the Leafs may talk publicly about him carrying more, but that's not what they really want.
The production hasn't been the issue. No. 34 has 10 points through 6 games, every one of them arriving over his last 5 outings after a quiet opener.
He's also a +2 with a game-winner already banked. But October numbers don't tell you what a 29-year-old's legs look like in April.
Think of a restaurant finally telling its head chef to stop waiting tables. The food gets better when he never leaves the stove.
Gavin McKenna and Easton Cowan inherit the heavy lifting
William Nylander is the obvious first piece. He leads Toronto with 11 points, including a pair of power-play goals.
Then there's Kirill Marchenko, the trade addition Friedman specifically pointed to. The forward has 5 points but sits at a -2, so the fit is still loading.
Easton Cowan might be the most telling piece. The 21-year-old already has 2 game-winning goals, one more than Matthews.
And Gavin McKenna, all of 18, has 4 points through 6 games on a $1,075,000 cap hit. That's the skill Toronto wants touching the puck more.
Here's the part that doesn't sit right. Handing transition duties to a teenager while paying Matthews $13,250,000 is a bet that looks smarter on a whiteboard than on a road trip.
The depth chart isn't helping either. John Tavares is day-to-day for personal reasons and expected out until at least Tuesday.
Chris Tanev is on IR with an upper-body injury, expected out until at least Oct. 19. That thins the blue line right when the forwards are learning new jobs.
Toronto sits fourth in the division at 3-2-1, scoring just two more goals than it has allowed.
The Leafs roll into Tuesday night's puck drop in Utah off a 6-3 win in Colorado on Saturday. Andre Tourigny's Mammoth are 4-2-0 and haven't seen Toronto yet this season.
So what happens the first time the offense stalls and the old instinct kicks in?
The organization wants Matthews hunting pucks, not hauling them. Watch where he picks it up against Utah, because that'll say more than any quote.
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Should the Maple Leafs really take the puck out of Auston Matthews' hands?
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