Nearly a full calendar year after being one of the final players sent down from the Toronto Maple Leafs prior to puck drop on the 2023-24 season, Easton Cowan is set to make another run for a roster spot ahead of the 2024-25 season.
After being called a reach and a surprise pick in the 2023 NHL Draft when the Maple Leafs took him in the first round, Cowan has played a ton of high-quality hockey making him one of the team’s top prospects in recent memory.
Now, however, due to his ineligibility to play in the AHL, Cowan would either have to end up at the NHL ranks with the Maple Leafs or play another season with the OHL’s London Knights — a role in which he mastered in 2023-24.
With those two options laid out, it’s no wonder Cowan has made it clear that he has his sights set on an NHL roster spot out of camp this season — a confidence the Maple Leafs are surely pleased with.
OHL Return Won’t Benefit Cowan
Cowan’s rookie season in the OHL was a successful one by most standards. He played in 68 games for the London Knights with 20 goals and 53 points. However, following the Maple Leafs drafting him, he exploded for 34 goals and 96 points in just 54 games last season.
He won the OHL regular season MVP along with the playoff MVP, posting another 10 goals and 34 points in 18 games en route to an OHL championship and a Memorial Cup berth. He did all of that while being out of the lineup for a little while during the season to represent Canada at the U20 World Junior Championship.
While we’ve already established that he cannot make the jump to the AHL this season, returning to the Knights and the OHL might not be beneficial to Cowan’s development anymore.
That said, making the jump to the NHL might not be realistic at this point either — even though he seems like a logical option to add offence to the Maple Leafs depth. While the loss of Tyler Bertuzzi opens up a hole in the Maple Leafs lineup, Cowan is still in tough against other prospects like Fraser Minten.
The only saving grace with Cowan possibly returning to the OHL would be the fact that he’s playing for an organization that has notoriously prepared players for the next level. The team of Dale Hunter and Mark Hunter in London has provided the NHL with a number of upper-echelon players which could bode well for Cowan in his development both as a player and a leader — if, in fact, he returns to the Knights for the 2024-25 season.
The final decision, however, will come down to Brad Treliving and what the Maple Leafs’ brass sees when camp opens up.
Maple Leafs Must Focus on Cowan’s Development
While the Maple Leafs were able to add depth on the back end in free agency, they did lose some of their offensive depth up front with Bertuzzi signing in Chicago. Now, where does Cowan fit into this if he does crack the Maple Leafs lineup?
For the Knights last season, Cowan played in all situations and excelled at both penalty killing and the power play. While it seems unrealistic to assume he’ll make the jump to the NHL, the Maple Leafs are set on making him a part of the big club at some point — deeming him as an untouchable last season.
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While Cowan seems set on cracking the roster to kick off the season, the Maple Leafs would have to either put him in the top-six and give him a good shot to be a difference-maker or be condemned for protecting one of their top prospects by playing him limited minutes in the bottom-six — certainly not a way to develop his game either.
When the time comes for Cowan to play in the NHL, he will need the backing of the team as one of the top offensive threats on the team — something we didn’t see with another prospect in Nick Robertson in previous seasons.
With that all said, the Maple Leafs will be missing some offence with the loss of Bertuzzi. Add to that the fact that both John Tavares and Mitch Marner are coming up on the ends of their respective contracts with their futures still mirky and the Maple Leafs will need to dip into that prospect pool.
Is now the time to promote Cowan? He seems to think it is. And while the discussion around the AHL eligibility remains a bigger league-wide talking point, the answer of whether or not he makes it this season lies in how it will affect his overall development.
