Maple Leafs futures odds and best bets for the season: Stanley Cup, Auston Matthews markets and more

Training camps are underway and preseason action is upon us. It's only a matter of time before the Toronto Maple Leafs kick off the regular season.

The latest: The heartbreak of another postseason exit is beginning to subside and Leafs fans can open their hearts and fill it with belief that this is their year. Even for those who don't want to bet on the Leafs to win the Cup, we have many more team and player markets for the 2023-24 season.

Maple Leafs futures odds and best bets overview

NHL oddsas of 9:59 a.m. on 10/04/2023.

Maple Leafs futures odds: Best team bets

Best Bet: To win the Stanley Cup (+1,000)

Toronto has legitimate Stanley Cup aspirations, making this the market bettors should focus on when placing a futures bet.

New general manager Brad Treliving wasted no time loading up his roster with hopes of making a deep playoff run. Forwards Tyler Bertuzzi, Max Domi and Ryan Reaves were brought in to add skill and snarl to a lineup that could certainly use both.

Bertuzzi figures to serve the most prominent role of the bunch, likely slotting in alongside Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner on Toronto's first line to open the year. The winger has dealt with injuries throughout his career, but he has a 30-goal campaign under his belt and is in his prime at 28.

John Klingberg was added to help the defensive core generate more offence. But he's a bit of a redemption project — since hitting the 40-point plateau in each of his first five seasons, he's reached it once across the last four campaigns.

Defence is the biggest question mark on the roster but Treliving's strategy appears to involve building a roster that fights the issue with more offence.

Ilya Samsonov, Joseph Woll and Martin Jones figure to handle most of the goaltending duties this year. Samsonov will lead the group to begin the season, but durability has been an issue. There are some warts among this threesome, but there's potential for a No. 1 to emerge.

The Eastern Conference is full of Cup contenders but the Maple Leafs have the talent to go toe-to-toe with any team.

Toronto is worth backing at this price as it enters another championship-or-bust campaign.

Maple Leafs futures odds: Best player bets

NHL oddsas of 9:59 a.m. on 10/04/2023.

Best Bet: Matthews under 95.5 points (-112)

Matthews is a fantastic player and a nice choice to have a bounce-back season, but this line seems a little ambitious.

The Maple Leafs forward was limited to 74 games last season as he dealt with injuries and his production took a slight dip. Matthews did hit the 40-goal mark for the fourth consecutive season and notched a solid 85 points, but he fell well short of the 60-46-106 stat line he put in his MVP 2021-22 campaign.

A 60-goal, 100-point campaign is a career year for most and it may just be one for Matthews. After all, he has missed the 90-point mark in three of his four seasons with 70-plus games played.

His injury track record isn't the cleanest, either. Matthews hasn't played 75-plus games since his rookie season and it'll be hard to notch 96-plus points without staying fully healthy.

Maple Leafs long shot futures bet

Best Bet: Matthews to win the Hart Trophy (+1,000)

Betting on Matthews to score 96-plus points is a poor wager to make because of precedent and potential return.

But it's for those two reasons that he's a smart pick to win the Hart Trophy.

Let's start with the potential return. A $112 wager is required to win $100 on Matthews' over for his points market. Conversely, a $10 stake cashes $100 when picking the Maple Leafs superstar to win MVP.

Secondly, we have seen Matthews outperform the implied probability of this bet. The odds suggest he has a 9.09% chance of winning this award, but Matthews has already won the Hart Trophy once in seven seasons, which equates to 14.3% of the time.

Sure, the league has changed a bit since he took home the honour in 2021-22, but he's 26 and still firmly in the prime of his career.

Matthews has shown that he's one of the league's elite talents and that a career year for him is good enough to win this award.