If the Leafs general manager is able to accomplish what he seeks to do during the coming off-season, you can expect to see more defencemen of that ilk added.

With the Benoit signing, the Leafs have four defencemen — Morgan Rielly, Jake McCabe, Conor Timmins and Benoit — under contract for 2024-25. Timothy Liljegren is headed for restricted free agency. Four others, including Mark Giordano, TJ Brodie, Joel Edmundson and Ilya Lyubushkin, will be unrestricted free agents this summer. 

Treliving said it himself on March 8, an hour or so after the National Hockey League trade deadline passed: The Leafs defence corps, for the remainder of this season, will get its work done by committee and that it’s going to continue to be a work in progress. 

So there’s no chance Treliving is going to run everyone back. Of the group of four D-men who are going to be unrestricted, Edmundson, perhaps, would stand the best chance of being re-signed. There’s certainly no guarantee of that, though, and it has to have crossed the minds of a few observers that Liljegren and the Leafs could go their separate ways, via trade, in the summer. 

Treliving, in his first full off-season in the Leafs’ GM chair, will have a greater opportunity to put his stamp on the defence corps.

The Benoit contract, with an average annual value of $1.35 million US, was a tidy bit of business for Treliving and it gives the player some security that was deserving.

A reshaping of the Leafs blue line between their final game of the playoffs and the start of training camp in September will include more defencemen who play with the elements that Benoit provides. It’s safe to assume we can count on that.

MARNER ON LTIR

For roster management purposes, as the club put it, Mitch Marner was placed on long-term injured reserve on Saturday morning.

The move is retroactive to March 7, the day Marner was hurt in Boston against the Bruins.

Though Marner would be eligible to be activated and return to play on Monday when the Leafs play host to the Florida Panthers, that won’t happen. The Leafs won’t practise again until Tuesday, and coach Sheldon Keefe doesn’t want to use Marner before he has had another full on-ice workout with his teammates.