The Toronto Maple Leafs will soon be playing for the first time this season as the team announced their roster for the 2024 Prospect Showdown set to take place on Saturday and Sunday.
Weekend plans are set 🍿
— Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) September 10, 2024
The 26-man roster will head to Montreal where they will face the Montreal Canadiens for two games at the Bell Centre. They will participate in three days of on-ice training overseen by Marlies head coach John Gruden and his staff. This slate of games will take the place during the Traverse City Prospects tournament that the Maple Leafs had taken part in nearly half a decade.
Easton Cowan, Fraser Minten, Nikita Grebenkin, Noah Chadwick, and Cade Webber will be the headliners. This will be Cowan’s second rookie camp and given how his off-ice training went this summer he should be the Leafs’ top performer Minten will be making his third appearance at rookie camp, Chadwick will be at his second, while Grebenkin and Webber make their debut appearances.
Among the group of invitees is Brandon Lisowsky, who confirmed last week he would be invited to the event when he spoke with reporters at the Saskatoon Blades training camp. Three free agents have been invited in the hopes of securing a contract within the Leafs organization: center Marshall Finnie, winger Maxim Muranov, and RHD Rhett Parsons. It is unclear if any of them will end up signing an AHL deal as they may be attending to fill out the roster, but these are three names worth keeping an eye on nonetheless.
Toronto will have four players from the most recent draft taking part in the festivities (headlined by Ben Danford and Miroslav Holinka), two players from 2023, three from 2022, three from 2021, and four from 2020. They also have invited three players to NHL contracts, five on AHL deals, and the four free agents mentioned earlier.
The two games will take place on September 14th and 15th, with puck drop for both games scheduled for 1 p.m. EST via the Canadiens’ press release. Details on where fans can watch the games online will be revealed closer to the day.
