É«É«À²

It’s very possible he is. After an off-season that’s seen leading point-getter Mitch Marner decamp to Las Vegas in free agency, the Leafs are in search of players who can at least partly make up for Marner’s absence by raising their standard of play. There are very few things the Leafs would appreciate more than the likes of Robertson breaking out with a career year. Given Robertson’s gift for beating goalies — over the past two regular seasons combined, only Auston Matthews ranks higher on the team in goals per 60 minutes at five-on-five — all that’s separating him from new statistical heights is more regular ice time.

For all that, with training camp a little more than a month away and players long ensconced in off-season training programs meant to shore up weaknesses and build on strengths, it’s worth remembering the harsh truth of a É«É«À² roster that figures to be rife with fierce internal competition for ice time, especially among depth forwards.

As it sits, and there’s every reason to believe general manager Brad Treliving has a trade or two to make before training camp, there are very few certainties on É«É«À²â€™s four lines. There are four players — Matthews, William Nylander, John Tavares and Matthew Knies — who are likely top-six locks. Beyond that, there’s a long list of players who’ll battle for the remaining roles in the opening-night lineup. There are only eight additional forward jobs, and more than a dozen players likely to arrive at training camp believing they can win one.

Just because the Leafs need players to step up doesn’t guarantee anyone the ice time to do it. And just because you’ve got a contract with the Leafs doesn’t mean you’ve got a job in É«É«À².

That’s as true for Robertson as it is for any number of teammates. Think about the cautionary tale of Timothy Liljegren. A summer ago, it was Liljegren, like Robertson a Leafs draft pick, who was signing a contract that included a career-high average annual value of $3 million on a two-year term. And if you’d looked at that signing in isolation, you might have assumed the Leafs planned to make Liljegren a regular in the lineup. Maybe at some level of the organization that was someone’s intention.

That someone certainly wasn’t head coach Craig Berube. After Liljegren failed to impress Berube in training camp, he was included in the lineup in just one of É«É«À²â€™s first 10 games before being traded to the San Jose Sharks for Matt Benning, a third-round pick in 2025 and a sixth-round pick in 2026.

Robertson, like Liljegren, has shown flashes of promise in a career that’s been waylaid by regular doses of organizational doubt. Two seasons ago, Robertson began the year with the Marlies, and by March of that campaign he was publicly expressing displeasure with his irregular role with the big club. He would play just 56 games with the Leafs in 2023-24.

“I’m not going to sit here and say I’m happy. I want to play,” Robertson said at the time. “But I understand my contract situation. Obviously if it wasn’t the way it was, maybe it’d be different situation.”

Things got better for Robertson at times last season. After signing another in a series of one-year deals, he came out of training camp flying with five goals in four pre-season games. But then he scored one goal in his first 19 games of the regular season, en route to 15 goals in a career-high 69 games played. And when the stakes were highest, Robertson played in just three of É«É«À²â€™s 13 playoff games.

On the upside, he was one of just four Leafs to score a goal in É«É«À²â€™s final four post-season games against the eventual champion Florida Panthers. On the downside, that goal came in garbage time of a 6-1 Game 5 drubbing.

In other words, Robertson still has plenty to prove if he’s going to earn a regular shift on a Berube-coached team. Which means when training camp opens next month he’ll have plenty of company in the very same boat.