The Toronto Maple Leafs Need to Find Their 2nd Round Gem

The Toronto Maple Leafs need to find their second-round gem.

The Toronto Maple Leafs are a team built through excellent first round drafting.

Morgan Rielly was fifth overall, William Nylander eighth,  Auston Matthews first, and Mitch Marner fourth.

Through in a hall of fame free agent signing, and trades for Freddie Andersen and Jake Muzzin, and you’ve got quite the team.

But the Leafs are missing their second round gem, as of yet.

And that is what will put them over the top.

Toronto Maple Leafs Second Round Gem

If you look at the teams who have managed to sustain a long period of dominance over the last decade, they all seem to have one thing in common: they were able to supplement their roster with a high-end talent found by pure luck later in the draft.

If you look back at the last ten years, I don’t think there would be much argument that the best teams, consistently, over this time have been:

Pittsburgh, Tampa, Boston, Washington, Chicago, and L.A.

All of those teams (except Tampa, who have been the league’s best team for the last two years) have won at least one Stanley Cup in the last decade.

Each of them also has a  hall-of-fame superstar that was drafted after the first round.

Kris Letang, Penguins, 3rd round, 2005.

Nikita Kucherov, Tampa, 2nd round, 2011.

Patrice Bergeron, 2nd round, 2003.

Duncan Keith, 2nd round, 2002.

Braden Holtby, 4th round, 2008.

Jonathan Quick, 3rd round, 2007.

So the six best teams of the last decade all had at least one probable hall of famer player drafted after the first round.

That may be a coincidence, but I doubt it. All those teams were built around highly drafted superstars, just like the Leafs.

Getting an elite player for free in rounds that usually don’t produce even replacement NHL players is a huge bonus, and it could easily be what put those teams over the top.

The Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t got that yet.

Perhaps they already have and we just don’t know it.

Maybe it’s Nick Robertson, last year’s second round pick.  Maybe it’ll turn out to be Travis Dermott, a second rounder from 2015, though I doubt he ever develops into a Keith/Letang like weapon.

There is no way to know.  One thing, however, is certain:  When the Toronto Maple Leafs finally find a second round gem, they’re going to be nearly unstoppable, as they already have one of the NHL’s best teams.