A lot of Leafs fans out there in the wider world likely want Max Domi on the team because of his father. He's not his father so, so let's learn who he is.

Max Domi is 28, and is listed at 5'10" and 192 lb. He was drafted 12th overall in 2013 by Arizona. He is a left-shooting winger.

Domi played for three seasons in Arizona at a time after Brad Treliving had left but while Shane Doan was still playing. No one should be surprised if that connection means more to the Leafs of today than the name.

Domi started well in Arizona, sitting third in points behind Oliver Ekman Larsson. He scored 18 goals, but never hit that mark with the Coyotes again. He was traded in 2018 – one of five trades he's experienced – to the Montréal Canadiens where he played for two years, and showed what being on a better team could do to his point stats.

He was traded to Columbus, who then traded him in a complex deal to Carolina at the deadline in 2022. He then signed in Chicago who traded him to Dallas last deadline. He had a low-scoring playoffs in Carolina, and a better showing in Dallas.

And that's really the story of Max Domi. He's feisty and plays well, but everyone always ends up disappointed by the amount of goals he scores because his shooting % fluctuates. He was great by simple counting stats in Chicago because he got a lot of ice time and power play work.

So what does he do well? Well, that's a good question, because his current player impact is mostly results from Chicago where he was playing in a milieu where no one cared about his defensive contribution and he got power play time and big minutes. He has a small amount of offence generation, a small gift as a setup man, good penalty differentials and really, really dreadful defence.

You have to go back to his Montréal seasons to find a better picture – a period that just happens to coincide with the standard age of a player's peak years. Both HockeyViz and Evolving Hockey present similar pictures.

Notably, back in Montréal, his offensive creation and his effect on Goals For was much, much better.

Now, it's hard when a player is moved from one bad team to the other with brief stints at the deadline somewhere better to really get a feel for what is the team situation and what is the player. For example: could anyone have had good defensive impacts in Chicago? What about Columbus?

He's scored 20 goals in a season twice, and came very close two other times. He's scored a lot less in a few others. And once you look deeper than the natural volatility of that kind of scoring, you can see his personal offence for what it is: a borderline third-liner, second-liner kind of player who doesn't drive the bus on his line but chips in points.

To play him (and pay him) as a top-six player you want to see something else than this modest offensive gift. You want some defence – or at least for him not to be a problem there, and that's never been the case. He's played on the power play, but never really added anything barring that one year in Montréal.

Is that 25-year-old him the real player? Or is this another free agency case of falling in love with who a player seems to be or who they used to be? No one wants the Leafs to be the next team disappointed in the totality of his game because they got a little dazzled by his work ethic and commitment following a good scoring season.

Since he's not the only addition at forward, he's not tasked with being "the guy" to improve them, he only has to try for Michael Bunting's tepid contribution level this season at a lower price than Bunting went for. The market seems to have surprised Domi. He reportedly (Darren Dreger on his podcast) wanted something like the Bertuzzi deal and with term, and no one bit. The rest of the NHL went with someone a little less dazzling, with less of a reputation for on-ice attitude, and paid them a lot less. Bertuzzi is likely taking a lot less than he wanted Boston to pay him too.

The deal is modest enough to somewhat mitigate the risk that Domi can't add enough when he's not on the top line and the top power play unit to make up for his deficits. He has to be more than his reputation for feistiness and scoring and better than he's been on bad teams. But I fear he and John Klingberg were both mistakes.

Brad Treliving is not get married to anyone here, and we'll be right back at it next summer asking who is even going to be on this team.

Free Agents and Contracts