Hurricanes Bunting felt ghosted by former team

As a professional hockey player in the National Hockey League, their comes a time in your career that you're lucky to become a free agent. If you've played the game suitors feel you can help them, opportunities occur where teams may line up for your services. After this season current Carolina Hurricanes forward and former Toronto Maple Leaf Michael Bunting has admitted that as the free agency window got closer, he didn't hear from the team that he had come home to play for the previous two seasons and thus realized pretty quickly it was time to move on.

When Bunting came to Toronto, he had little to no National Hockey League experience playing just eleven games over the previous two seasons with the Arizona Coyotes, but former General Manager Kyle Dubas prided himself on the understanding that although the numbers didn't explain what kind of player he was, he had tremendous upside with the idea that he would likely be pencilled in on the Maple Leafs top line alongside Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner.


Although Buntings numbers were respectable while with the Maple Leafs, they paled in comparison to Zach Hyman who left town as a free agent to sign with the Edmonton Oilers. But similarly, to Nazem Kadri, Bunting could not be relied on when it truly mattered as he seemed to have a chat with the Department of Player Safety at the most inopportune times during the Maple Leafs runs over the last two seasons.


As the Maple Leafs look to pivot to a new top line Left Winger in Tyler Bertuzzi, the hope for the franchise and the fanbase should be that along with respectable numbers Bertizzi brings the grit necessary to help propel the top line and maybe lead by example in that department, teaching a thing or two to his linemates while hopefully helping carry the squad through a long playoff push that hasn't been seen in the city of Toronto since the early 90's and beyond to the pinnacle of1967.