Morgan Rielly is the definition of a true Toronto Maple Leaf. As the longest-tenured player on the roster, he’s seen plenty of good and plenty of ugly over the years, mostly ugly. From day one, he was penciled in as our true number-one defenseman, in what was a completely different NHL than the one we know today. Rielly came up in an era when the vast majority of defensemen in the league had one primary job: play defense.

While Morgan has always been a two-way player, he’s also always adapted to whatever pairing he’s been thrown into, dating back to the Carl Gunnarsson and Cody Franson days, through his steady years alongside trusty Ron Hainsey. In total, he’s skated with over fifteen different partners across his thirteen-year tenure in Toronto.

The Decline Is in the Numbers

Fast forward to 2026, and Rielly finds himself on a noticeable decline. This past season, he certainly didn’t play the way he would have wanted to, and he didn’t pass the eye test either. So let’s take a deeper dive into what really happened.

Last season, Rielly posted a RAPM xGA/60 of +0.160, an isolated defensive metric that strips away teammate and competition factors to measure what impact a player individually has on the chances his team gives up. For reference, 0 is league average, and a good defender lives in the negatives. Jacob Slavin, one of the league’s premier shutdown defensemen, sits at -0.250, while a defensively sound player like Jake McCabe comes in at -0.146. A +0.160 is, simply put, not good.

To be completely fair to Rielly, this isn’t a one-year blip caused by a bad team around him. Over his past five seasons, he’s averaged +0.140. The team’s poor performance this season just made an existing problem stand out even more.His shot suppression tells the same story. Rielly posted a CA/60 of +3.3, meaning that over every 60 minutes of ice time, his presence leads to roughly three extra shot attempts compared to an average defenseman. If you’re wondering about the difference between the two stats, think of it this way: CA/60 measures how many shots a player gives up, while xGA/60 measures how dangerous those chances are. In Rielly’s case, both point in the wrong direction.

He Was Already Being Sheltered

Here’s what makes those numbers harder to excuse: the coaching staff was already protecting him. Rielly started 75% of his shifts in either the offensive or neutral zone. To be exact, 45% of his starts came in the offensive zone and 30% in the neutral zone, leaving only 25% of his shifts starting in his own end. He was given the softest defensive workload a top-pairing defenseman can get, and the leak still showed up. To make matters even worse, he finished the season at minus -18.

And Yet, the Offense Was Elite. Seriously.

This is where things get really weird. By traditional numbers, Rielly had his worst offensive season in the last four years: 11 goals and 25 assists for 36 points. But dive into the advanced numbers and you find a whopping xEVO of 11.4, which is genuinely elite and, honestly, shocking.

What does that mean? xEVO measures the even-strength offense a player drives while he’s on the ice: the quality and quantity of chances his team generates with him out there, regardless of whether the puck goes in or rings off the crossbar. It ignores the box score entirely and asks what’s actually happening on the ice. By that measure, Rielly was one of the best offense-driving defensemen in the entire league last season, even while his point totals cratered.

Now, before anyone calls him snakebitten, some honesty is required: this is a player who has cracked 50 points only four times in thirteen years. The advanced numbers don’t say he’s unlucky. They say something more specific: his on-ice impact has always outrun his personal production. He drives offense; he just doesn’t always finish it or collect the points from it.

And the other half of the split is just as extreme. Rielly posted a shocking xEVD of -4.4, meaning his even-strength defense graded out 4.4 expected goals worse than what a replacement-level call-up would have provided. He really has become a split defenseman: genuinely not bad at all offensively, but so poor on the defensive side that it’s hard to do the offense justice.

So the full picture of 2025-26 is one of the most extreme split profiles you’ll ever see. Elite offense by the underlying numbers (+11.4), replacement-level-or-worse defense by those same numbers (-4.4), all on sheltered minutes. The problem isn’t his total value. It’s the shape of it.

The Contract Reality

Any conversation about moving on has to start with the contract. Rielly is signed through the 2029-30 season at a $7.5 million cap hit, with a full no-movement clause for the next two seasons and a 10-team no-trade list tacked onto the final two years. Acknowledging that, this really is Rielly’s decision to make about what’s right for his career, and recent reports say newly appointed general manager John Chayka plans to approach him for exactly that conversation about his future as a Maple Leaf.

That said, the Leafs have roughly $22 million in cap space to work with this offseason, so this isn’t necessarily an urgent matter right now. There’s room to be patient and get this right rather than forcing a bad trade.

What a Role Change Actually Looks Like

Regarding the role change, I think the answer is straightforward: reduce his 5-on-5 minutes and pair him with someone who can actually move the puck. Rielly needs help getting out of his own zone quickly, and in thirteen years he’s never really played beside a partner who is quick with the puck in transition. I’d keep him on PP1 for now, though that could change in the coming weeks once free agency opens and the trades start flying.

And about those fifteen-plus partners: a revolving door like that is tough for anyone to get comfortable in. As we dug into the analytics, it’s clearly not an excuse for the defensive numbers, because the isolated metrics follow him through every pairing. But there’s one thing he’s somehow never experienced in thirteen years: playing next to a true 1A defenseman, where he could step back into being a smooth-skating facilitator instead of the main guy on every breakout. It might not change anything. But it’s the one experiment Toronto has never actually run.

Time for a Change, One Way or Another

I say all of this as someone who has advocated for Morgan Rielly his entire career, as a lifelong fan of this team who has watched him develop from a fifth-overall pick into the face of the Leafs’ blue line. That’s exactly why I believe it’s time: either a real role change here in Toronto, built around what he still does at an elite level, or a fresh start somewhere new, a chance to revamp the back end of his career before it’s too late.