Watch out for the Toronto Maple Leafs during the 2020 NHL Entry Draft.
You may not know how good their draft is for a few years, but watch for the Toronto Maple Leafs to have a sneaky-good draft this season. So why would I say that?
Well, first and foremost, the Leafs have 11(!) draft picks this year. Although nine of those picks are after the Third Round, it doesn’t matter. With so many picks to choose from, Toronto has a ton of options.
They can either package those picks in a trade or they can use those picks to draft. Either way the team is in a great position heading into the NHL Entry Draft on October 6.
Toronto Maple Leafs Draft
Although first-round picks are very important for an NHL franchise, unless they’re top 10, they typically aren’t game-breakers. If you look at the Leafs current roster, all of their big-time players were drafted in the top 10.
- Auston Matthews
- 2016, 1st overall
- John Tavares
- 2009, 1st overall
- Mitch Marner
- 2015, 4th overall
- Morgan Rielly
- 2012, 5th overall
- William Nylander
- 2014, 8th overall
- Round 1: 15th overall (Joe Sakic,1987)
- Round 2: 44th overall (Jose Theodore, 1994)
- Round 3: N/A
- Round 4: 106th overall (Christian Ehrhoff, 2001)
- Round 4: 122nd overall (Dmitri Yushkevich, 1991)
- Round 5: 153rd overall (Craig MacTavish, 1978)
- Round 6: 168nd overall (Carl Hagelin, 2007)
- Round 6 177th overall (Mathieu Perreault, 2006)
- Round 6: 180th overall (Mike Smith, 2001)
- Round 7: 189th overall (Gord Murphy, 1985)
- Round 7: 195th overall (Fernando Pisani, 1996)
- Round 7: 212nd overall (Radim Vrbata, 1999)
Obviously the Leafs would love to add top-10 talent, but unless the team has a dumpster-fire of a season, that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Toronto doesn’t need a high-end draft pick anymore because they have more than enough skill up-front. Instead, the team needs to build up as much depth as possible with as many of those players making entry-level money.
Here’s a current look at the Leafs draft picks this year with notable picks in NHL History (via: Hockeydb.com)
It’s not like you’re going to find Hall-of-Fame players super late in the draft, but it’s definitely possible to find really good depth. Especially with so many draft picks, the Leafs are bound to get at least one future NHLer with those late picks.
Even on the Leafs current roster, they have a number of players that were late draft picks that turned into higher-end NHL talents. Andreas Johnsson (2013, 7th Round), Jake Muzzin (2007, 5th Round) and Zach Hyman (2013, 5th Round) are three players that were drafted well outside the First Round that have gone onto score 20 goals in the NHL or become a top-pairing NHL defenseman.
You can never judge a draft until three-to-five years after the fact, so we can’t say the Leafs did a great job for a while, but it wouldn’t be shocking if a 2020 NHL Draft pick was on Auston Matthews or John Tavares wing by 2024.
Who knows. Maybe they’ll get lucky like the Edmonton Oilers did with Fernando Pisani in the 1996 NHL Entry Draft and the Leafs will also have a player who ends up scoring 14 goals in a post-season run to the Stanley Cup Finals. Except this time around, the team will actually win the Cup.