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When you consider Tavares will lay claim to the seventh-highest salary-cap in the league this season, a bottom-six gig doesn’t exactly scream “value proposition.”

Or maybe it’s exactly that. Tavares, in the sixth year of a seven-year deal worth $77 million, turned 33 last week. And though he’s coming off a season in which he compiled 36 goals and 80 points in 80 games, there’s no denying the fall-off in his game.

Which is why there’s some wisdom in at least considering the lighter workload that’d be afforded Tavares in a third-line role. For one thing, considering the Maple Leafs have yet again refused to shake up a flawed roster’s core despite being 1-for-8 in post-season series in the Shanaplan era, the obligatory annual changes, beyond the usual tweaks on the fringes, have to come from within.

This week head coach Sheldon Keefe was praising Tavares for buying into the plan in the name of the greater good. The idea is to bolster Toronto’s depth down the middle after the guy they saw as an ideal solution to that problem, trade deadline acquisition Ryan O’Reilly, fled in free agency for Nashville’s relative tranquility. For Tavares, who moved to the wing to play alongside O’Reilly at times last season, trying something new is the captain-ly thing to do.

“John is all about the team,” Keefe said. “He wants to see the team do well. When we presented him with a scenario we were building, he is all for it and all about it.”

Still, make no mistake: There could be something in it for Tavares, too. Last season Tavares was successful, perhaps in part because he averaged just 17:39 a game — well below his career average of almost 20 minutes and the lowest since his first season as an NHLer that saw him out there for 18 minutes on a nightly basis.

That reduction in regular-season ice time might not seem like a huge drop-off, but it added up. To put it in perspective, in 80 games last season Tavares played 191 fewer minutes at five on five than he did during playing 82 games in his first season as a Maple Leaf in 2018-19. That’s a lot less heavy lifting at even strength.

At the same time, Tavares performed with impressive overall efficiency. Last year his production rate of 3.4 points per 60 minutes at all strengths matched the highest such total of his career, according to . His rate of 1.5 goals per 60 minutes ranked as his third highest. Less turned into more, to a degree.

Now, those numbers are deceiving. A good chunk of that production came on Toronto’s power play, the second-most efficient in the league, where Tavares saw his biggest minutes as a Maple Leaf. And there’s every indication Tavares will continue to be a mainstay there. Which makes sense. He led the team in power-play goals (18) and points (39) last season.

Still, in this load-management era of pro sports, with Tavares eligible for a contract extension next summer in a league that isn’t always kind to veterans, there’s something to be said for pacing oneself in the name of extending one’s shelf life. If playing a little less at five on five seemed to suit him, there’s an argument for continuing the trend.

Speaking of heavy lifting, though — if a third-line role means third-line running mates, it’s fair to ask: Who will be Tavares’s setup man beyond special teams? This week at training camp Tavares has been playing with Sam Lafferty and 20-year-old rookie Matthew Knies. Now, you won’t hear Tavares complain about who he’s playing with. To the contrary, this week he called his time with Lafferty and Knies “a great opportunity for me to raise my game and help make them better and utilize their skill sets and what they bring to the table.”

Still, while Knies is a promising talent with intriguing upside, the 28-year-old Lafferty has never put up more than 27 points in a season. That figures to be an adjustment for Tavares. It’s possible it could prove to be an untenable strain that renders the whole experiment kaput. When Tavares scored a career-high 47 goals in his first year in Toronto, he was playing alongside Mitch Marner. Last year, of Tavares’s 36 goals, one or both of Marner and Nylander assisted on 26 of them. Tavares is at his best when he’s playing among Toronto’s best. How he’ll do when he’s surrounded by something less remains to be seen.

As it sits this week, it’s a given that it’ll be Matthews who gets the luxury of Marner on his right wing, at least to start this season, alongside new arrival Tyler Bertuzzi. And Tavares finding his way onto a line with Nylander — who appears on track for a regular-season run as a centreman — would require Tavares to move to the wing. Which is a possibility, but clearly not Tavares’s preference given he has played in the middle almost exclusively as a pro.

Tavares on the wing would likely mean fourth-line centre David Kämpf in a third-line role, which would bring us back to the concerns of the lack of centre depth.

Nothing is carved in stone, of course. There’ve been plenty of training-camp experiments in years past, and nothing really matters until the playoffs, anyhow.

Which is probably part of the reason why, in Keefe’s Leafland, an impending rework seems inevitable for almost everything. The fact Tavares is proving himself to be more effective in smaller doses doesn’t figure to be one of them.