Toronto Maple Leafs: A Look At Rounds 3-7 Of The NHL Draft

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Jun 24, 2016; Buffalo, NY, USA; Auston Matthews puts on a team cap after being selected as the number one overall draft pick by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the first round of the 2016 NHL Draft at the First Niagra Center. Mandatory Credit: Timothy T. Ludwig-USA TODAY Sports /

It finally happened Leafs Nation, the NHL draft came and went and our beloved, long-suffering Toronto Maple Leafs have their first legitimate ‘Number One’ center since Mats Sundin.

Auston Matthews was the belle of the ball and for the first time in a long time the Maple Leafs came away with the prize. We’ll have plenty of time to talk and break down Matthews in the coming months, so in this article we’ll focus on some of the other players the Leafs have added to their pipeline.

Check out YouTuber Seer Video‘s highlight package for all 11 prospects:

We’ll take a quick peek at the entire draft class that Mark Hunter and company have assembled to give you an idea of how the Toronto Maple Leafs fared. One interesting note about the Leafs 2016 draft class to start is the clear market inefficiency that Kyle Dubas and the analytics team seem to think they have uncovered; over age players. The Toronto Maple Leafs drafted 5 “re-draft” players that had been passed over in previous drafts. Elliotte Friedman mentions this in his recent “30 Thoughts” column:

"25. I’d love to see Toronto’s draft analytics. The Maple Leafs took five players who were re-entries, not taken the first time they were eligible. That’s clearly a strategy, an attempt to ride the Troy Brouwer/Carl Hagelin/Gustav Nyquist/Ondrej Palat train. There’s some research indicating those types of players are good bets in the second round and later. Clearly the Maple Leafs subscribe to that."

The thinking here being that these players can slot immediately into roles with the Toronto Marlies or Orlando Solar Bears and begin to have the Leafs strength and conditioning, nutrition, skating and skill coaches work directly with them.

More from Editor In Leaf

The Toronto Maple Leafs are the NHL’s richest organization and spend a sizeable chunk of money on player development and the staff that help with that – this has only increased under Brendan Shanahan. It only makes sense that they would want to get their young players into their staff’s expert hands as soon as possible.

Another interesting fact from the Leafs draft this year is the plain 180 degree turn from last season. What I mean by that is in 2015 the Leafs selected nine players, six of which were under 6feet tall and four under 190lbs – three of those four coming in at under 170lbs.

Compared to the 2016 calls where the Leafs selected 11 players and only three were under 6feet tall and four under 190lbs – none under 170lbs. Many scouts and analysts felt that the Toronto Marlies got pushed around in their Calder Cup quest by bigger teams in the Albany Devils and Hershey Bears, this is clearly trying to remedy that.

Now on to the real players themselves, in reverse order of when they were drafted…

Next: Picks No.10 &11

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