Top 10 Toronto Maple Leafs Busts of the Last 20 Years

Over the past few seasons, the Toronto Maple Leafs have been really good at drafting and developing, but that wasn’t always the case.

There are plenty of players that get drafted or signed by the Toronto Maple Leafs who show promise but fizzle out unexpectedly.

Was it because the Leafs didn’t dedicate themselves to development as much as they do now or was it self-inflicted by the player?

Every example is completely different, but it seems to happen more than we think.

Over half of the current Maple Leafs roster is filled with players who were either drafted by the team or played a significant amount of time with the Marlies before being called up, or both.

The current players that were drafted high by the Leafs that are now superstars are Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, Morgan Rielly and William Nylander. Whereas those players like Zach Hyman, Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Johnsson are all examples of the development process.

All seven of these players were all listed high on the Leafs prospects boards and through hard work and determination ended up making the NHL and having a real impact for their team.

However, as mentioned above, there are a number of highly touted prospects drafted or signed by the Leafs that fans hoped would turn into those players just listed, but didn’t.

Here are the top 10 highly touted prospects that never made an impact with the Leafs.