TORONTO — If you’d only caught a few moments of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ most promising prospect flying around the sheet at the Ford Performance Centre on Thursday, you’d have all you need to understand just how badly Easton Cowan wants to crack the big club’s roster this season.
That much was clear as Toronto’s prospects gathered at the team’s practice facility in Etobicoke, Ont., taking the ice for the first of two skates before they hop on a bus and head to Montreal for the 2025 Prospects Showdown. Cowan was easy to spot, the 20-year-old sprinting full-tilt each time he got into a drill, finishing out of breath before he could go again, buzzing around the waiting crowd with nervy excitement in between.
The overflowing energy was understandable. The stakes are high for No. 53 this season.
Fresh off a banner 2024-25 campaign that saw him lift the Memorial Cup, suit up for Team Canada, and finish his OHL career with nothing left to prove in junior hockey, Cowan enters the new campaign eyeing his first year as a pro. And with the Maple Leafs’ forward corps in flux following the departure of Mitch Marner, there’s more opportunity for the talented Strathroy, Ont., product than ever before.
A productive summer in the gym has him ready to meet the moment.
“I’m definitely stronger, bigger and faster — it’s the best I’ve ever felt coming into camp,” Cowan said Thursday after the day’s skate had wrapped. “I feel confident and just excited to get going today.”
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The young winger stacked on seven pounds of muscle over the off-season, he said, the added strength giving him an extra step at this season’s first on-ice session. The impact of the off-season progress was clear to those taking in the skate at ice-level, too.
“It was noticeable to me,” said Toronto Marlies head coach John Gruden, who’s overseeing the prospect team. “And you’ve got to understand, Team Canada, their development camp, all those times playing at the Memorial Cup two years in a row, winning it — it’s a lot on a young man. So, for him to be able to get some time to work on his strength is important. And it’s quite evident he did a really good job working on that over the summer.”
It was evident, too, to the others out there flying through the drills alongside him.
“He’s maybe not the tallest guy, but he’s like a pitbull,” said defender Ben Danford, another of the organization’s most promising talents on the rise. “He’s a pretty stocky guy. When he has the puck, he’s low to the ice and hard to knock off.”
“It looks like he got a lot faster this year, too,” added Marlies pivot Jacob Quillan, who will skate alongside Cowan and Borya Valis at the Showdown this weekend. “He’s a great player, a great playmaker. … It’s going to be fun playing with him and Valis out there.”
There’s no questioning Cowan’s offensive potential. Sixty-three goals, 165 points and a lengthy list of trophies and personal accolades accumulated over his past two seasons in London are evidence enough. But landing a spot on the Maple Leafs’ roster come October will depend on more than just the promise of that raw skill. It’s all the moments in between the potential highlight-reel plays that will determine whether Craig Berube deems him worthy of making the jump.
“It’s just the consistency of doing things right, over and over,” said Gruden. “He’s just got to understand whenever his number’s called, he just has to do his job. The rest of his skill that he has — because he has a lot of it, he’s a very smart player, a competitive player — will take care of itself. For him to be able to follow a game plan for 60 minutes, with consistency, is going to be very important.”
For Cowan’s part, the message from the Maple Leafs brass has been clear.
“I’ve just got to be a worker,” he said Thursday. “I’ve got to be a hound. Get pucks in, get pucks out, play simple. Because, you know, me and the Leafs organization know that if I do that, my offence will take over. So, just focus on defence first and the offence will come.
Another season marinating in the OHL under the tutelage of Knights head coach Dale Hunter helped on that front.
“Obviously, you go back to London and you’re getting coached by the Hunters — you’re going to learn a lot,” Cowan said. “I felt like I just learned to have better management of the game — when to get pucks in, when to get them out, when to make that risky play. So, it’s been good that way, and I’m just looking to bring that here into camp.”
A summer spent skating with bona fide pros helped, too. The young winger has been in Toronto for much of the past month, he said, balancing training in the Maple Leafs’ facility and back in London — skating with Montreal Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki, along with fellow pros Lawson Crouse and Dylan DeMelo, Cowan said he tried to take in all he could.
It’s all in the details, says Danford, who himself got a chance to train with Morgan Rielly and Chris Tanev for a stretch this summer. Beyond witnessing the overall work ethic, it was seeing the mindset that big-league veterans bring into each skate that had the greatest impact, the defender explained.
“It’s the little things,” Danford said. “You know, we’ll be doing really simple drills — retrievals in the D-zone, stuff like that — and it’s just the little things that they do. They’re acting like it’s in-game, they always have their head up, they’re scanning. Even if there’s no forecheckers, they’re acting like there’s forecheckers. They’re always skating as fast as they can.
“Everything that they do, they play it like it’s in-game, because that’s how you get better.”
For the big-league hopefuls, the real test now comes. The summer sessions are in the rear-view, the first chance to impress is here, and for Cowan, the pressure only increases moving forward, with a few games this weekend to show what he can do and main camp just around the corner.
The young winger only has to rewind a year to be reminded of how unpredictable this phase of his career can be, after a promising 2024 camp ended with a trip back to London. This time around, the 20-year-old is more settled, he said, knowing he’ll be in the city either way, whether as an NHLer or AHLer. Either way, he isn’t rushing the process.
“No matter if it goes good or bad, you can always take something away. I just had the mindset all summer to get better. And my mind is pretty free right now. I got no worries,” Cowan said. “I know I’ll be playing somewhere in Toronto this year — obviously, I want to play in the NHL, but I’ve just got to have a good mindset and keep it free.
“At the end of the day, I’m playing hockey. I get paid to play hockey — that was my goal in life. I’m here, and I want to stick here — it’s fun. You’ve just got to try to have a free mindset, try to enjoy it, and live life day-by-day.”
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