- Nick Blankenburg is expected at Maple Leafs training camp on a tryout
- The 5-foot-9 defenseman set a career high with 24 points and still went unsigned all summer
- Read below for how Toronto’s cap crunch and Chris Tanev’s recovery open the door
One of the better defensemen left on the open market is getting a tryout instead of a contract.
Nick Blankenburg will attend Toronto’s training camp, per Kevin Paul Dupont of the Boston Globe. The 28-year-old right shot spent the entire offseason waiting on a phone call that never came.
His size is the obvious reason. Blankenburg stands 5-foot-9, and most teams won’t carry that on the blue line unless the player is a star.
He has been a lot more than a warm body, though. Blankenburg put up 16 points in 60 games for Nashville in 2024-25 while averaging better than 19 minutes a night, then followed it with 21 points in 49 games last season before the Predators shipped him to Colorado at the deadline for a fifth-round pick.
That adds up to 24 points in 61 games, a career best.
Colorado slotted him into a smaller role and he still scored in Game 1 of the second round against Minnesota. Watch him break down his first goal as an Avalanche defenseman:
Toronto is a sensible landing spot. New general manager John Chayka went out and got Emil Andrae in a pre-draft trade with Philadelphia, so a smaller, mobile defenseman isn’t a dealbreaker in that room.
Chris Tanev matters here too. He played 11 games last season before core-muscle surgery in March and plans to be on the ice for day one of camp, though he still needs medical clearance.
Money is the other piece. The Maple Leafs sit more than $2.75 million above the upper limit per PuckPedia, and Toronto has been squeezed all offseason.
Max Domi solves that. He will miss the start of camp while recovering from offseason surgery and looks like a strong LTIR candidate, which would leave enough room to sign Blankenburg at or near the minimum.
A tryout is a long way from where his summer started. Blankenburg sat atop every list of the best value left in free agency, ahead of names with far more mileage. Now he has to skate his way onto an NHL roster in a couple of weeks.
