Following the John Tavares signing, the narrative in Leafs Nation has quickly shifted to the team’s question marks on defence. Given the way that Boston exploited Toronto’s weakness at RD in the playoffs, many fans have been hypothesizing potential offseason moves to address this area of weakness, including yours truly.



I know there has been a lot of talk about Jake Gardiner’s future (ie. trading him for pieces the Leafs could use in a trade for a Top 4 RHD), but I think the more interesting question is: what happens if Toronto doesn’t make any moves on the back-end this offseason?



In my attempt to tackle this question, I posed it to my followers on Twitter to gauge public perception. After going through all of the possibilities, I noticed a few major themes.



Running a Gardiner-Rielly first pairing



This was quite the unpopular opinion when James Mirtle brought it up last year, but I feel like it’s finally starting...