The Leafs happily selected their number one centre at the draft a few months ago, perhaps not daring to dream he would grab that job so quickly. But they didn’t land any other centres of note in the off-season.
Auston Matthews has grabbed that number one job quickly, at least judging by ice time where he leads in both all-situations and even-strength minutes, but he’s still deferring on matchups to Nazem Kadri. Kadri is drawing the tougher forward opponents most of the time, even on the road.
Tyler Bozak is the number two in all situations time due to his power play minutes, so the load is shared around among those three lines fairly evenly, and that is all working out fairly well.