Why the Maple Leafs waived Adam Brooks and kept Michael Amadio

On Sunday, Leafs general manager Kyle Dubas made a call he might not have anticipated making only a few days earlier.

With Ilya Mikheyev having suffered a broken thumb in Saturday’s preseason win against the Ottawa Senators and out for a minimum of eight weeks, Leafs’ management had to go back to the drawing board and shift their opening night lineup.

For weeks now, questions about that lineup were few and far between. If there was an extra spot up top, it was safe to assume Adam Brooks may nab it, based on head coach Sheldon Keefe’s fondness for him.

But the curveball few saw coming in this Leafs camp came in the form of Brooks getting placed on waivers Sunday and then claimed by the Montreal Canadiens on Monday, and Dubas calling centre Michael Amadio to tell him he’d made the team.

“It’s nice to know that they believe in me,” said Amadio, who signed a one-year, two-way contract worth $750,000 in July.

So how did the Leafs get here, losing the player they drafted in the fourth round in 2016, to the Canadiens and having Amadio — who wasn’t often in the discussion to crack the lineup — taking a fourth-line role?

It sounds, first of all, that Dubas’ input may have tipped the scales.

“It was a tough decision, one frankly that I was not overly involved in. It was a management decision for them to sort through. As a coaching staff, we believed in both players,” said Keefe.

Let’s start with Brooks being placed on waivers.

Since 2017, almost all of Brooks’ games in the organization have been under the watch of Keefe with either the Marlies or the Leafs.

Going back to Keefe’s playing days, Brooks may very well have reminded Keefe of himself: the two players share a similar height and build, can read the game well and neither are short on effort.

“I really am happy with how he’s progressed over his time with the Marlies into the role he played for us last season. It’s difficult to see him in this situation but we value him as a player,” Keefe said of Brooks on Monday. “He was a big part of our team last season down the stretch. He came in and played a very important role for us and did extremely well.”

During Brooks’ 11 NHL games last season, he scored four goals and generally looked adept in a fourth-line role, with his smarts and vision pairing well with another cerebral player in Jason Spezza.

But the speed wasn’t there in his game, and it’s fair to ask if it will ever come. Even as Brooks remained in the mix in training camp, he never really separated himself from the pack. That’s also the nature of his game: his skill set means he can provide value lower in the lineup, but he still never really popped on the ice for the Leafs.

An optimistic take is that with Brooks not being sent to the Marlies, Semyon Der-Arguchintsev and Mikhail Abramov, two centre prospects in need of regular ice time, stand a better chance to get that early season ice time in the AHL.

Perhaps the deck was stacked against Brooks from the beginning of training camp considering there was no dearth of new forwards with more NHL experience looking to crack the lineup, and that two spots on the fourth line were all but assured to Spezza and Wayne Simmonds.

It’s easy to forget Brooks is already 25 and no longer a prospect, but has yet to show himself as more than an AHL/NHL tweener. Maybe improvement comes with opportunity in Montreal, where he could conceivably garner more ice time.

Still, it’s worth wondering if Dubas believed that, given Brooks’ age, he’d hit his ceiling with the organization.

Enter Amadio.

The lack of discussion around him throughout training camp was probably warranted, given there were more intriguing forwards signed around the same time as him.

But now that he’ll be in the opening-night lineup, what do the Leafs have in him, and why did he beat out Brooks for one of the extra forward spots?

First, at 6-foot-2 and 205 pounds, Amadio has a clear margin over the 6-foot, 179-pound Brooks in the size department.

But most importantly, he’s got 155 more games of NHL experience than Brooks, a fact that Keefe highlighted on Monday. Given that Amadio could be bouncing in and out of the lineup to start, the Leafs will want to minimize any adjustment time for Amadio. There’s likely the hope that his four seasons with the Los Angeles Kings should ease any adjustment period.

Keefe noted Amadio’s skill set — size and his versatility to play both centre, wing and even some special teams as well.

“In each situation that we gave him throughout this preseason, he did a really good job for us,” said Keefe.

Talking to people in and around the Kings organization, there’s the sense that he does have more sneaky skill to offer within games than Brooks. People who watched him closely in Los Angeles note his intelligence, his poise with the puck and how well he can make plays in tight spaces. And he probably fares a little better with those attributes compared to Brooks, if only by a small margin.

He can complement skilled players, which makes him a fit for a fourth-line centre role that should see Spezza moved to the wing.

In 68 games for a disappointing Kings team in 2019-20, Amadio finished with six goals and 10 assists and fourth among the Kings regular forwards in five-on-five xGF with 55.94 percent.

Yet what held him back at times with the Kings was a lack of consistency in his play, to the point that some within the organization grew frustrated at the discrepancy between the highs and lows in his game.

With the Kings talented crop of young prospects emerging, Amadio was deemed expendable and was flipped to the Ottawa Senators in a March trade for defenceman Christian Wolanin.

The Senators did not re-sign Amadio. One person who had watched Amadio closely wondered if the trade out of Los Angeles, the organization that picked him in the third round of the 2014 NHL draft, caused him to understand he might have to show more of himself and bring that aforementioned consistency in his next opportunity.

“I came in with the right attitude this year,” said Amadio, who admitted he might have been more nervous about trying to crack a team like the Leafs in years past.

“He spent a great deal of his offseason here in the facility training,” added Keefe. “So I just feel like he was really comfortable coming into camp and that was an advantage for him.”

Since Saturday, Amadio’s short-term future with the Leafs took a complete turn. If Mikheyev didn’t break his thumb, Amadio might also have been placed on waivers. Instead, he’s now inviting friends and family down to Toronto from his hometown of Sault Ste. Marie to watch his Leafs debut.

“I have a little bit more experience coming in this year,” said Amadio. “Bringing that with me and having that behind me was big for me.”

He’ll get a chance to show what that experience is worth to the Leafs starting on Wednesday.

(Stats via Natural Stat Trick)

(Top photo: Steven Kingsman / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)