Top 10 Toronto Maple Leafs Draft Misses: 1980s Edition

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TORONTO, ON – APRIL 16: Jon Casey #30 of the St. Louis Blues skates against Doug Gilmour #93 of the Toronto Maple Leafs . (Photo by Graig Abel/Getty Images) /

The Toronto Maple Leafs have missed out on a number of Hall-of-Fame players over the years in NHL Entry Draft.

The NHL Entry Draft is a crap-shoot and hindsight is always 20/20, but over the last 50 years the Toronto Maple Leafs roster could have looked a lot different.

For the purpose of this fun experiment, I’ve decided to look back at the last 40 NHL Entry Drafts starting in 1980 to see what could have been for our beloved franchise.

Although there are hundreds of players you could say that the Leafs should have drafted, there is one important criteria to this.

The player can only be a “miss” if another team selected that individual within five picks of the Toronto Maple Leafs draft pick.

The reason for this is because it makes it much more realistic that the Leafs missed out on a player if another team drafted them that close.

For example, Dominik Hasek went 199th overall in the 1983 NHL Entry Draft, while Toronto had the 188th overall pick. If 10 more teams passed up one of the greatest goaltender of all-time, then I consider that more of a league-miss than a Leafs miss.

For the next week, we’ll posting each decade starting with the 1980s, then moving towards 2010s.

Here are the top 10 draft misses by the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 1980s.

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