James Mirtle's profile photo

James Mirtle

Toronto

Senior Managing Editor and Columnist, NHL at The Athletic

Senior Writer @TheAthletic @TheAthleticNHL • Podcasting with @LeafReport and @JDBunkis • Kamloopsian 🇨🇦

Featured in: Favicon theathletic.com Favicon theglobeandmail.com Favicon cjr.org Favicon theathletic.co.uk Favicon bvmsports.com Favicon nytimes.com Favicon kuow.org Favicon editorandpublisher.com Favicon chatsports.com Favicon ourcommunitynow.com

Articles

  • Each NHL team’s best and worst draft pick of the past decade

    1 week ago | nytimes.com | Scott Powers |James Mirtle |Aaron Portzline |Max Bultman

    The Stanley Cup Final is over, and the 2025 NHL Draft is now less than a week away. To get into the spirit, The Athletic asked its NHL staff to look back and identify what they think is each team’s best and worst draft pick of the past 10 years. In response, we heard about the hits, misses, steals, busts and even duds between the 2015 and 2024 drafts. Here are the selections. Anaheim DucksHigh picks such as Trevor Zegras, Mason McTavish and Leo Carlsson have hit.

  • How the Panthers became the NHL’s unicorn. Plus: The offseason frenzy begins

    1 week ago | nytimes.com | James Mirtle

    Red Light newsletter 🏒 | This is The Athletic’s hockey newsletter. Sign up here to receive Red Light directly in your inbox. Top of the morning. They’re all done playing, so we’re into NHL offseason mode in a big way, with a trade and four signings to talk about. But first: A final bit of Cup talk. Flori-dominationWhat can other teams learn from the Panthers? Apologies if you saw this nugget going around already, but I think it’s incredible enough to share again.

  • Are the Florida Panthers the best team of the cap era? Ranking the 6 contenders

    1 week ago | nytimes.com | James Mirtle

    The numbers from the Florida Panthers’ playoff run this year are pretty incredible. The Panthers didn’t just repeat as Stanley Cup champions this year, becoming only the 10th franchise to do so in NHL history; they were completely dominant, racking up many of the best statistical marks of any team in the past 30-odd years.

  • Will the Maple Leafs keep Mitch Marner, John Tavares? Trade William Nylander?

    1 week ago | nytimes.com | James Mirtle

    And we’re back. With so many questions coming in for our latest Maple Leafs mailbag, we’ve broken answers out into multiple columns. Here’s Part 1 and Part 2. Below, we dig into Part 3, where we get into questions about keeping Mitch Marner, saving cap space for Connor McDavid in 2026, Easton Cowan’s role next season, who Auston Matthews should play with and John Tavares’ plausible contract structure.

  • Will Maple Leafs target Brad Marchand, Nikolaj Ehlers? Move Morgan Rielly?

    1 week ago | nytimes.com | James Mirtle

    We're really getting into silly season now. Trade rumours are flying, and with Chris Kreider's cap hit dumped to the Anaheim Ducks, more actual trades are likely to start flowing once the Stanley Cup Final wraps this week. First of all, I appreciate your patience waiting for me to get to some of your many excellent questions. I'm hoping to do more of these as we wind through what is going to be a very busy, challenging offseason for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Contact details

Emails

[email protected]

Socials & Sites

Try JournoFinder For Free

Search and contact over 1M+ journalist profiles, browse 100M+ articles, and unlock powerful PR tools.

Start Your 7-Day Free Trial →

X (formerly Twitter)

Followers
169K
Tweets
234K
DMs Open
No
James Mirtle
James Mirtle @mirtle
7 Jun 25

https://t.co/T7nORY09Q5

Strombone
Strombone @strombone1

Favorite player of all time

James Mirtle
James Mirtle @mirtle
7 Jun 25

Only Joe Sakic and Maurice Richard have more career playoff overtime goals than Brad Marchand now.

James Mirtle
James Mirtle @mirtle
7 Jun 25

With two goals tonight, Brad Marchand moved into 29th in NHL history with 63 playoff goals, passing Bobby Hull, Phil Esposito, Jacques Lemaire, Mark Recchi and Corey Perry.