Toronto Maple Leafs: 2019 NHL Draft Recap

7th Round, 204th Overall – Kalle Loponen (D, Hermes, Mestis)

The Leafs were originally supposed to have two seventh-round picks, but instead, they traded their other pick (slotted to be at 208th overall) to the St Louis Blues in exchange for a seventh rounder in 2020. Loponen saw one game in the SM-Liiga but spent the majority of his season playing in their Mestis league (essentially the Finnish version of the AHL) with Hermes.

The 5’11 right-handed defenseman put up 12 points in 30 games playing there.

While most Leafs fans will probably groan at the fact that he’s another undersized player, he likes to prove on the ice that his size doesn’t mean anything. Loponen doesn’t shy away from contact and he isn’t afraid to go into the dirty areas. He’s a competitive player and has potential to pitch in offensively while maintaining a steady defensive game, but like most of their other 2019 draftees, he needs to get stronger and improve his positional game.

That being said, Loponen just signed an extension with Karpat of the SM-Liiga, a team that’s known to be the hardest to crack as a rookie. That alone should tell you that the Leafs might have found a gem in the late rounds of the draft. You can never have too many back end prospects, so it will be interesting to see where he ends up on the depth chart.

I know there are likely a decent amount of Leafs fans who won’t like this draft class for one reason, and that’s the fact that all six picks ended up being players under 6’0. But with that being said, I would like to remind everybody that you don’t draft for size. Sure, having bigger guys on the ice during the playoffs could be important, but guys like that are a dime a dozen in free agency and via trade. Kyle Dubas said it best back in 2015 prior to drafting Mitch Marner. In the end, all that matters is that you take the best player available. It’s much, much easier to draft skill and trade for size than to draft size and trade for skill.

If you go back to the 2016 Leafs draft class, you’ll notice a ton of guys who were at least 6’3 or taller. And almost none of those guys have even cracked the AHL yet. This includes prospects like Keaton Middleton, Nicolas Mattinen, and Nikolai Chebykin. The former two aren’t even with the organization anymore.

Am I saying that all bigger players are busts? Absolutely not. But to criticize the Leafs’ draft class because they’re all undersized is nothing short of absurd. These kids are all 17 or 18 years old, meaning they aren’t necessarily done growing. Especially with the changes in today’s NHL moving from a physical league to a skilled league, drafting players just because their height begins with a “6′” is not the way to go. Time will tell if these prospects become anything, but overall I would say the Leafs drafted a solid crop of new talent and it will be interesting to see how these guys develop and grow in the organization.

All statistics obtained from eliteprospects.com