Toronto Maple Leafs Top Prospects List Part 2
The Toronto Maple Leafs no longer have a great group of prospects.
This is just part of the transition from rebuild to contender, however, and is not a problem. Last year, the Toronto Maple Leafs had the best group of prospects in the NHL.
The list last year was populated with names like Calder Trophy Winner Auston Matthews, World Championship MVP William Nylander. and Hometown Hero Mitch Marner. Not to mention, Zach Hyman, Connor Brown, Nikita Zaitsev and Connor Carrick.
Weirdly, all of those player managed to become NHL regulars last season and now the team’s list of prospects has featured nearly a complete turnover.
Nine Rookies
The Toronto Maple Leafs played up to nine rookies last season, and somehow still managed to make the Playoffs. This season the team will be looking to take the next step towards contention. This was seen this summer as the team acquired a trio of 36-38 year-olds to come and augment the team.
Whether Patrick Marleau, Ron Hainsey or Dominic Moore will actually help the team remains to be seen. What we do know for sure is that the Leafs still have a decent set of prospects who’ll be looking to crack the lineup.
No longer ranked in the top half of the NHL, the Leafs prospect list still contains several players with superstar potential and another half-dozen players with decent odds of becoming better-than-average NHL players.
Outside the top two or three players, this list may not be stacked with high-end talent, but it does feature ten players with a chance to be above average NHL players. The list of players who didn’t quite make the cut – Timashov, Soshnikov, Gauthier is testament to this fact.
If you want to see part one of the Toronto Maple Leafs top 10 prospect list before you read the top-five, click here.
Josh Leivo
Full disclosure: I know that a 24 year old has no right to be on a team’s top prospect list. NHL players peak, on average, at age 23/24, and the vast majority of successful NHL players are already established in the league.
Furthermore, players this age who already play in the NHL are pretty much already all their going to be. Rare is the player who breaks in at age 24 and suddenly becomes a star.
Rare it may be, but that doesn’t mean it never happens. Toronto fans are all familiar with a certain pair of 27 year old part-time baseball players who (for reasons still inexplicable) managed to become top-ten MLB players for the better part of a decade.
This almost never happens, but let’s talk about Josh Leivo anyways.
The 6’2 2011 third round pick remains as one of the last holdovers from the Burke/Nonis era. In parts of four seasons, he has played 41 games and scored nine goals and 18 points.
Last Year’s Performance
It was his performance last season that has him on this list, however. In 13 games, Leivo managed 10 assists. This wasn’t enough to earn him a regular shift, but it was enough to get him protected in the recent expansion draft.
In what was kind of a lost season for Leivo (he only played 18 games total between the NHL and the AHL) he did manage to work his way into the lineup conversation.
When Leivo played, he produced. Even though he only played 160 minutes, his points per 60 was third in the NHL – behind Stamkos and Malkin, and ahead of Crosby. Obviously he’s not that good, and the sample is small, but that’s enough production to earn more ice time.
Leivo shoots a lot, puts up good possession numbers and is generally effective whenever he’s on the ice. Players who drive possession and take a lot of shots are always needed.
Though he is fast approaching a time when the team will have to use him or let him go, for now he remains the Toronto Maple Leafs fifth best prospect.
Jeremy Bracco
Jeremy Bracco is a right-shooting right-winger from Freeport, New York. The American prospect was selected by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the second round, 61st overall, in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft.
After the Leafs drafted Bracco, he went to play in the OHL with the Kitchener Rangers. In his first OHL season, he scored 64 points in 49 games.
In Bracco’s second season, he exploded for 83 points in 57 games. This was good enough for 12th overall in league scoring. This, however, doesn’t represent the full scope of Bracco’s season. He missed 11 games, and if you prorate his points-per-game to a full season, he would have been on pace for 99 points and fourth overall in league scoring.
Toronto Maple Leafs: Deep on the Wing
While Bracco plays a position the Leafs are currently strong in, it doesn’t mean they should jettison all their scoring-winger prospects. Depth is good. It provides options. Sure, Bracco may end up as trade bait just as easily he could end up playing on the Leafs, but you have to remember, it wasn’t long ago that a player like Bracco would have been close to the Leafs best prospect and getting over hyped to the ninth degree.
At age 20, Bracco will almost certainly play this season in the AHL – but there is a very strong possibility that injuries or great play could propel him into the NHL at any time.
That won’t happen until the Leafs clear away some of their current log jam at forward, but the day when Jeremey Bracco makes the NHL isn’t that far away. With his speed, he’s likely to get every opportunity to make the NHL, and if he learns to be better defensively as he begins his pro career, he’ll be a lock to have an NHL career.
Adam Brooks
Adam Brooks has sort of come out of nowhere to climb the Toronto Maple Leafs top prospect list.
Brooks was picked in the fourth round, 92nd overall, in the 2016 NHL Entry Draft. At 20 years old, he was an over-ager, almost two full years older than most players selected. These kinds of picks are long-shots at best, but the Maple Leafs seem to have guessed right about Brooks being a late-bloomer.
One reason for Brooks originally being undrafted has to do with his size – NHL teams seem to perpetually underrate small players. Though, it’s not like Brooks is all that small, but 5’10 175 is small for NHL centres.
If you look at his stats, another reason for his not being drafted emerges. In his first two seasons in the WHL, Brooks put up 12 and 11 points. After scoring 11 points, he was passed over in the NHL draft.
Then, a year later, he jumped to 62. That’s an impressive jump, but it still wasn’t enough to get him drafted.
Brooks then went back to Regina for a third season and scored 120 points, and won the scoring title, nearly doubling his previous total. This is when the Leafs drafted him.
After being drafted, he went back for a fifth season in the WHL and scored 130 points. This was good for second in the WHL (he missed the title by a point) and was 21 points more than 3rd place.
To go from being undrafted to nearly winning two straight scoring titles is impressive, and it will be interesting to see how Brooks does in the AHL. The Toronto Maple Leafs have signed him to an entry level deal and he most likely will play the upcoming season in for the Marlies. With Brooks, however, what is most likely to happen doesn’t seem to matter, so for all we know he’ll be racking up the points with the Leafs sometime soon.
Timothy Liljegren
The Toronto Maple Leafs won the draft lottery two years ago and selected potential franchise player Auston Matthews. Afterwards, fans of the team looked at the young talent and concluded that all they needed was a blue-chip blue-liner. Some even went so far as to suggest one final year of tanking in order to aquire Swedish prospect Timothy Liljegren.
The Leafs instead went out and, on the backs of nine or so rookies, made the Playoffs. They picked 17th in the draft and no one was expecting anything interesting – except maybe the long awaited trade of James van Riemsdyk.
Leading up to the draft, people talked about how Liljegren – previously thought to have a chance at going first or second overall – was going to drop due to his missing most of the season with mono, which led to his poor play at the World Juniors. We joked about it, but none of us really thought he was going to fall to 17th.
But he did. The most improbable pre-draft scenario of dreaming Leafs fans actually came to fruition. The Leafs selected Liljegren 17th overall.
Now, it’s easy to follow the narrative that he only dropped because of the illness and assume that the Leafs got a bonus top-five (or better) pick. While no doubt that played a role, it’s just a little too convenient and easy of a narrative for me to fully trust.
Liljegren could potentially be the Leafs Duncan Keith or Kris Letang – a homegrown franchise defenseman. But he’s still pretty raw and he did miss a huge year of development. This year, he could play in the AHL or the NHL or even go back to Sweden. There is just know way to know right now.
The Leafs say all the right things as far as managing expectations go, but he could still blow everyone away at camp and make the NHL. The Leafs have shown they will play kids if they deserve it.
But it’s highly likely he’s still a year, maybe more away. Bottom line: the Leafs got a crazy good prospect, at a position they had no right to expect to get him, and that is nothing but good news.
Timothy Liljegren is the second best prospect the Leafs have. The only reason he’s not number one is that Kasperi Kapanen is way closer to being an NHL regular.
Kasperi Kapanen
The Toronto Maple Leafs acquired Kasperi Kapanen as part of the Phil Kessel trade. He is 5’11, a right-winger, and 21 years old. He is the Toronto Maple Leafs top prospect.
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So far, he has played just 17 NHL games and has a single goal. Don’t worry though, this was mostly just fourth line time. He also played six playoff games, where he scored two goals. One of those was in double overtime!
Despite not scoring very much in his debut with the Leafs, Kasperi Kapanen did manage to put up impressive possession numbers 52.51%. This was good enough for fourth on the Leafs last year (though we should be wary of the small sample size).
Though it was just for a brief time, Kapanen showed that he can drive possession in the NHL, make his linemates better and play above-average defense. He has speed (he’ll be one of the fastest players in the NHL) and he can score.
His potential is a more offensive Komarov, of (if we’re really lucky) Nino Niederreitter. He may not score 40 goals or be a superstar, but he should be able to be among the league’s top defensive players, while chipping in a fair amount of offense.
This year there is nothing left for Kapanen in the AHL. He was a point-per-game there last year, and his work in the Playoffs showed he needs to be in the Toronto Maple Leafs top nine.
He makes a fast team even faster (he’s likely the fastest player in the organization) and his defensive abilities are desperately needed on the team that allowed the second most shots in the NHL last year.
Next: Leafs Must Find Room For Kapanen
Kapanen’s presence and NHL readiness should precipitate the trade of one of the team’s more veteran, expensive pending free agent wingers. It’s time for Kapanen to graduate to the NHL, but until he does, he is the Toronto Maple Leafs top prospect.