Toronto Maple Leafs: 1st Rounders Through the Years

The Toronto Maple Leafs have acquired their main four-man Core through the NHL Entry Draft.

Auston Matthews, Morgan Rielly, William Nylander and Mitch Marner are great – but they don’t erase the Toronto Maple Leafs sorry draft history.

In fact, generally speaking, prior to this iteration of the team, I don’t think anyone would disagree that, throughout the years, the Leafs have been an awful team at drafting.

One of the worst.  We’ve seen first overalls that  pale to their peers, we’ve seen wasted picks, bad picks, mediocre picks and the ubiquitous traded picks that go on to have hall of fame careers.

Before 2012, I don’t think any Leafs fan would have batted an eye had they learned the team was hexed and cursed.  All those  years and you’d think at least a couple picks might have worked out a bit better.

Did the Leafs ever luck into an Erik Karlsson with  a 12 pick?  Sure, some nice late round picks turned out (Kaberle) but if we just stick to the first round, how do the Toronto Maple Leafs look over the last 30-odd years?

Since we are approaching the next draft, I figure it would be fun to just highlight each player the Leafs have picked in the first round.  For the sake of symmetry we’ll start with a first-overall pick and finish with a first-overall pick.

Wendel Clark

The year was 1985 and the Leafs had their first ever first-overall selection.  It would be 32 years until they got another (though Mats Sundin and Bryan Berard were first-overall selections they traded for).

Clark will go down as one of the greatest players in Toronto  Maple Leafs history.  Perhaps the #1 most beloved player in franchise history.

Clark scored 330 NHL goals and played into the 99-00 season.  He was great, but how great would he have been if they kept him from fighting and he wasn’t perpetually injured.

Watching the old Clark/Probert fights is pretty fun, but what were the Leafs thinking allowing their best player to fight so much? Especially against other teams enforcers (though, little known fact, Probert once scored 29 goals in a year).

As good as Clark was, it’s hard to think about him without remembering that had the Leafs had the First-Overall pick the year before, they would have gotten Mario Lemieux!

Still, a great selection.  If only the Leafs could have kept it up.

Vincent Damphouse

Top Gun, Karate Kid, Short Circuit…….1986 was a great year for movies, and for drafting hockey players.

With the 6th overall selection, the Leafs selected Vincent Damphouse.

This was a great selection (though they passed on 8th overall Brian Leetch) and the combo of Clark / Damphouse should have led to years of success.

By any measure, Damphouse is one of the greatest Leafs ever drafted.  In the 1989-90 season he scored 90 points and went on to score 1200 for his career.   It is just that most of his success came with other teams.

Like when he won the Stanley Cup with the Canadiens.

Damphouse was eventually traded in a bad trade with the Oilers (that eventually netted the Leafs Andreychuck)  and the early 90s Leafs did have some success, partly due to that.

However, it’s hard to imagine that having such good back-to-back picks as Clark and Damphouse didn’t work out better in the long-term.

Luke Richardson

Going through this list with hindsight really shows a path the Leafs could have taken to greatness.  To be honest, it’s somewhat depressing!

But hey, I said straight off that this wasn’t going to be pretty!

Imagine the Leafs had of taken Leetch instead of Damphouse….they almost certainly then wouldn’t have taken a defenseman in 1987.

And there is an apocryphal story – famous, and one assumes true  –  that the Leafs GM at the time, Gary McNamara,  sided with his head coach, John Brophy, over his head scout, Floyd Smith and selected Luke Richardson over Joe Sakic.

Now, it’s one thing to look at a list 30 years later and say “damn, if only we picked that guy,”  but to know they actually argued about it…..and ended up picking the wrong guy is a punch to the gut.

Joe Sakic is a hall-of-fame player.  He’d have likely been the best player in modern Toronto Maple Leafs history.

Instead they picked average defensive defenseman Luke Richardson at seventh overall.

Imagine a team built around Sakic, Clark and Leetch?  Damn!

Still, at the time, Clark, Damphouse and Richardson was a pretty fine combo of teenagers to build around.

It just never really worked out.

Scott Pearson

Say what you will about the previous three picks, but even if they weren’t perfect, they still gave the Leafs a really good foundation of players to build around.

1988 came around and the Leafs were still terrible, still picking high.

They had the sixth pick and they used it on winger Scott Pearson.

Pearson was a bust.  He ended up playing just under 300 NHL games and never hit the 20 goal mark.

Had the Leafs hit on this pick, who knows what could have happened.

But they didn’t. They picked Pearson, and the next four picks were Martin Gelanis, Jeremy Roenick, Rod Brindamour and Teemu Selanne.  All of whom played at least 1200 games and scored at least 300 goals.

Oops!

3 x 1st Rounders

The years is 1989 and the Leafs have sucked again.  However, things are looking up: they have Damphouse, Clark, Richardson and Pearson (not yet a bust) four of the seemingly best prospects in the game, and they have THREE FIRST ROUND PICKS.

They are on the verge of being one of the best young teams in hockey, with a decade or more of awesome teams to look forward to.  The team is finally putting a decade of misery behind them and building for the future.

Uh…..this seems awfully familiar, so let us hope there is a new ending to the more recent, similar scenario……….because this was a horror show!

With their three first round picks, the Leafs completely blew it.

Richardson and Damphouse would soon be traded. Clark would be come perennially injured and Pearson would be a bust.

Those three picks:

#3 overall: Scott Thornton (yes, that one. The Leafs drafted a decent player, but essentially they picked an enforcer with the third pick, passing on Bill Guerin).

#12 overall: Scott Pearson ( a total bust.  Could have taken Olaf Kolzig).

#21 overall: Steve Bancroft (who? exactly!). The next pick was Adam Foote.

I told you this was going to be rough.