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Toronto Maple Leafs Prospects: Top 20 Young Leafs Intro

By Torrin Batchelor

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The Bob MacKenzie’s, Darren Dreger’s and Pierre LeBrun’s of the Hockey Media world have all retired their smartphones and picked up summer time cottaging for a much-needed break. Well, we here at EditorInLeaf are always trying to come up with new ways of keeping you, Toronto Maple Leafs Nation, entertained and informed.

With Corey Pronman (ESPN’s Prospect Guru) releasing his recent organizational prospect rankings (Toronto Maple Leafs placed 2nd) we started thinking about how far our prospect system has come. This led to some pretty lively discussion about the Toronto Maple Leafs young players and we’ve been working on something special for you ever since…

EditorInLeaf’s 1st Annual Top 20 Young Leafs

Now this is not the be-all-and-end-all of prospect rankings, nor should it be, it is meant to be a source of (hopefully) entertainment and information that gets you up to speed on some of the Toronto Maple Leafs top young players as we start working towards training camp and pre-season hockey.

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This series is meant to generate discussion and fuel opinion, because at the end of the day, that’s the best part about being a fan! Scouts mostly agree that you don’t really know what kind of impact a player will have until he plays 250 games in the league, or just over 3 full seasons.

Following that thought process, the writers here at EditorInLeaf.com have each voted for our top young Toronto Maple Leafs players following that 250 game played cap as well as an age limit of 24 by the start of the season (so no Kadri) as our only rules. We’ve each ranked all 39 eligible players from 1 to 20, with 1 being the best.

A 1st place vote is assigned 20 points, a second place vote being assigned 19 points, etc. then we added up each of our individual lists and the points given to each player and came up with the official Top20 rankings.

What are the Top20YoungLeafs rankings?

A ranking of the Top20 young players in the Leafs organization as voted on by our panel of writers at EditorInLeaf.com.

How did we come up with our Top20YoungLeafs rankings?

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Each writer voted on the list of 39 eligible players and ranked them 1-20. A 1st place vote is worth 20pts, 2nd place 19pts, 3rd place 18pts etc etc. Then each players point totals were added up and ranked highest to lowest to give us our Top20 tally.

How does a Toronto Maple Leafs player or prospect qualify for the list?

  1. Have played less than 250GP at the NHL level
  2. Be under the age of 25 by start of the 2015-2016 season
  3. Have an NHL contract, or have been drafted by the Leafs in the 2015 NHL Draft

Some fun and interesting stats and trends that came out of our rankings:

  • 30 different players got a Top 20 vote by one of our writers
  • 10 of our Top 20 were not part of the Toronto Maple Leafs organization this time last year (really says something about how far the depth of this organization has come)
  • 4 players drafted in 2015 made the Top 20
  • 7 players were acquired via trade or the waiver wire
  • 1 player via free agency
  • 12 players drafted by the Leafs
  • 0 Goalies, 6 Dmen, 6 Centers and 8 Wingers make up the list
  • 9 players were drafted in the 1st round
  • The CHL was the most represented as a talent producer for the Leafs as 12 players were drafted from the CHL; 7 from the OHL, 3 from the QMJHL, 2 from the WHL

It really does say something about how far this organization has already come when HALF of our Top20 rankings weren’t even apart of the organization this time last year. There really is a #Shanaplan and we are starting to see it come to life.

All of us here at EIL can’t wait to share our official rankings with you and get some discussion going about who exactly our top young player should be? Who made our rankings that didn’t deserve too? Who was left off that should have made it on? A lot of opinions to be shared and a lot of discussion to be had will be coming up over the next few weeks, so stay on the lookout for more Top20YoungLeafs content!

Next: Potential PTO Invitees

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