How does Fraser Minten fit into the Maple Leafs’ plans at centre?
It is 10:20 a.m. and every Toronto Marlie has left the ice after the conclusion of practice nearly 30 minutes earlier, except for one.
Multiple Toronto Maple Leafs are preparing for their own practice commencing in an hour on the same rink when Fraser Minten looks up from the bag of pucks he is emptying. He wants to continue exhaustive post-practice stick-handling and shooting work. Only the sound of boards opening to bring a long-overdue Zamboni onto the rink breaks his concentration.
"You're kicking me off?" Minten shouts, feigning surprise, to affable Leafs staffer Mike Kelly.
Minten fires a few more pucks into an empty net before narrowly avoiding the Zamboni's path. His desire to soak up ice time is understandable: The 20-year-old Leafs prospect suffered a high-ankle sprain during a rookie tournament game against the Montreal Canadiens on Sept. 15. After cracking the Leafs opening night roster as a 19-year-old centre in 2023 and playing four NHL games, Minten could not attend main training camp and make the impression he wanted to on new coach Craig Berube.
The Leafs entered training camp thin down the middle. The experiment to move William Nylander to centre was short-lived, again. John Tavares was pushed up into a second-line role. Max Domi was placed into an on-again, off-again centre spot. And David Kampf , seemingly fallen out of favour with reduced minutes under Berube, was jammed into the fourth line role.
And so there is good reason for intrigue around Minten right now, following his return to full health and Oct. 29 assignment to the Marlies.
The Leafs lack of centre depth has been exposed in an up-and-down start to the season. With a shored-up blue line, adding a centre now feels like GM Brad Treliving's most pressing roster priority.
Could the solution come internally?
Berube demands defensive responsibility from his players. There's no doubting Minten's attention to detail defensively. And so with the all-round, cerebral centre projecting to make his AHL debut on Nov. 9, could it be a matter of time until Minten becomes the answer to the Leafs' centre woes?
"(Minten) is going to be a good player," Berube said on Oct. 24, before adding, "You have to deal with (injuries), and he has done it in the right way. He has a really good head on his shoulders."
Physically, Minten says he feels in top shape after his recovery. Mentally, the strain of bringing a fast-moving train to a grinding halt was real. Minten was one of the few Leafs prospects with a chance to impress in training camp for a call-up this season. Not getting that opportunity out of the gate stung.
"You're not part of a team when you're hurt. In junior, you're still with the guys everywhere. But when you're hurt here, there's a return to play group that you're segregated into. You're just stuck in between," Minten said.
But as has been custom for a person who was likely called mature out of the womb, Minten quickly got serious.
"The recovery becomes your job," he said.
Minten got to work on heightened power skating sessions once he returned to the ice. Leafs skating consultant Michele Moore Davidson teamed up with Leafs assistant general manager Hayley Wickenheiser and player development staffer Patrick O'Sullivan to fuse skating lessons with specific areas for improvement in Minten's game. Skating has long been an area that Minten himself has wanted to fine-tune: protecting the puck better, getting deeper into his stance and turning off with the puck quicker.
His 6-foot-2 frame and his reach gave him a natural advantage in junior hockey. But he's quickly understood that in professional hockey, nearly every player possesses that kind of size. Developing a better centre of gravity was important.
So, no surprise, he found the silver lining.
"An extra month of summer training," he quipped.
If you're the Leafs, you have to hope that training pays off. There's room for Minten to grow before bringing him back into the NHL.
And he knows it.
"I have a pretty high floor as a player," he said. "Now it's just about pushing the ceiling as much as I can. That's my skating and finding ways to score and produce offensively."
This self-awareness from Minten is bang-on.
Minten produced 31 goals and 67 points in 57 WHL games after being drafted, dominating the way he was expected to. But last season, on a stacked Saskatoon Blades team, Minten focused heavily on his defensive play. He was unable to match that focus with heightened production, scoring 19 goals and 38 points in 36 games with the Blades.
Also – and we're talking about a minuscule sample size here – in four games with the Leafs Minten didn't register a point and just four 5-on-5 shots.
Yes, the Leafs need an upgrade at third-line centre. No, the Leafs don't need another responsible bottom-six player in the middle of the ice right now, with Kampf and Pontus Holmberg on the roster. Finding a third-line centre who can elevate a team that currently sits in the bottom-half of the NHL in goals per game (3.00) should be the priority for Treliving.
Looking to Minten to become a player who can produce in the NHL right now sounds like a rush job, even to Minten himself. As the topic of an NHL future comes up in conversation, Minten quickly recalls his NHL draft interview with the Leafs back in 2022, when it was Kyle Dubas and Jason Spezza grilling prospects.
"Kyle and Jason were asking me when I thought I'd play (in the NHL). I said, 'Two or three more years of junior and then two or three years of pro,'" Minten said, shrugging his shoulders.
Minten believes he's right where he should be. He has no complaints about playing in the AHL, a league so many players pine to get out of.
"I'm playing pro hockey at 20. I'm pretty happy about that," Minten said.
And if you're the Leafs, you're likely happy with that too. Just as there were flashes from Easton Cowan during preseason that suggested he might be ready for the NHL, the Leafs didn't see enough consistency to suggest he could handle the rigours of an 82-game season. Bringing Cowan into the NHL this year might have been detrimental to his long-term development.
That applies to Minten as well. He has the smarts and defensive acumen to likely plug into a fourth-line role right now. But the Leafs don't need a band-aid solution while a regular player nurses an injury. And that's not a bad thing.
The Marlies plan on deploying Minten in all situations, giving him time to flesh out his offensive game. He was deployed on a line with offensively-minded wingers Nikita Grebenkin and Ryan Tverberg in recent practices. Building confidence in the offensive zone alongside players who frequent that part of the ice is a priority for Minten. The Marlies want consistency in his game above all, including offensively.
"It's a big jump, coming from junior hockey," Marlies coach John Gruden said.
The organization wants Minten to learn to use his size to his advantage and look for offence close to the goal instead of relying on rush chances. If Minten can put points on the board regularly, the conversation around him later in the season could change.
But for now, the Leafs aren't overflowing with prospects who could develop into long-term options. Making an effort to develop sustainable solutions feels like the right call. That's why Minten will likely get a full AHL season to play all situations and prove he can hang instead of diving in headfirst as he did last season, and the Leafs could look for centre options via trade.
Minten seems likely to eventually become an NHL player over the next few seasons. Starting Friday, the Marlies should have another intriguing young piece for an entire season to add to a team that features recent draft picks such as Grebenkin, Roni Hirvonen and Topi Niemela.
And Minten wants nothing more than to be part of that group.
"At my age, you still have a ton of room for development over the next few years," Minten said. "There's still a lot of underlying things that you have to do to get to the point where you can be there, then stay there and then be good there."
(Photo: Claus Andersen / )
