Toronto Maple Leafs: Embarrassment of Riches

The Toronto Maple Leafs are up 3-2 against the Boston Bruins in round one of their opening round playoff series.

The Toronto Maple Leafs roster features an unusual amount of home-grown talent, most of it extremely young, and that is what makes this team so special.

To me, there’s something to be said about drafting and building your team rather than just assembling a bunch of free-agents.

The Miami Heat super-teams, or the New York Yankees – those are basically hollowed out, paid for fantasies that don’t have the value and meaning of building a team the classic way.

Some probably don’t care about the distinction, but I do.

Toronto Maple Leafs Homegrown Talent

The Toronto Maple Leafs have Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, and William Nylander.  A trio of early draft picks who have become franchise level players and who make up the cornerstone of this team.

Additionally, the Leafs have Morgan Rielly and Nazem Kadri, also home-grown first round talent.

Andreas Johnsson is a seventh round pick who is returning first round value.  Travis Dermott is a second round pick returning first round value.

Connor Brown and Frederick Gauthier are also Leafs draft picks.  That’s nine members of their starting lineup that the Leafs drafted.

You can add in Jake Gardiner, Kasperi Kapanen and Zach Hyman to this list too though, because even thought the Leafs didn’t draft them, they were acquired as prospects and haven’t ever played for any other teams besides the Leafs.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have 12 home-grown players on their roster, which is pretty impressive.

What’s even more impressive is the embarrassment of riches they still have on their farm team, despite being in the third playoff run of their rebuild and being one of the best teams in the NHL.

Rasmus Sandin is one of the NHL’s top prospects.  He and Timothy Liljegren are, as I understand it, two of the best teenage defenseman to ever play in the AHL.

Sandin had three assists in his playoff debut on Friday night.

Jeremy Bracco had 75 points in the AHL this year and was over a point per game.

All three of these players will be looking to secure a job in the NHL next season, and if the Leafs have to shed salary (Zaitsev, Hainsey, Brown, Marleau and maybe even (but we hope not) Hyman are all candidates to make cap space) they just might do it.

To have three such highly touted prospects, when your contending NHL team already has 12 home-grown players on it, is frankly, quite insane.

A lot of people worry about how the Leafs will sign Marner, Johnsson and Kapanen, but they’ll do it because a) the cap is going up and b) they can replace anyone making any money – that isn’t a superstar – with someone almost as good making the league minimum.

Like I said – an embarrassment of riches.