Toronto Maple Leafs Former Top Prospect Still Going to be Impact Player

The Toronto Maple Leafs poor drafting has been the cornerstone of their failure for the last 40 or so years.

Even once the Toronto Maple Leafs started to keep and use their high picks, the almost unimaginable failure of Mark Hunter’s drafts after the first round have hurt their abilities to navigate the salary cap and ice a successful team. (Which they have done, no thanks to Hunter).

In the coming years, the Leafs are going to be flush with solid players who emerge from below the first round.  Players like Nick Robertson, Mikko Kokkonen and Mikhail Abramov give the Leafs the chance to develop their first team-drafted, post-first-round star since Tomas Kaberle in 1999.

This will really help the Leafs maintain their current level of competitiveness for a long period of time.  In the meantime, there is one Leafs prospect on the verge of blossoming who is currently only not an NHL player due to the team’s depth and Cup aspirations  – he’d be playing on at least 20 other teams right now.  That player….

The Toronto Maple Leafs and Timothy Liljegren

We tend to forget about players once they’ve reached post-hype status, and a late first rounder from four years ago tends to get labeled as a bust, especially when the background story on that p player was so juicy as to bring to mind words like “steal” “star” and “top prospect.”

Timothy Liljegren was famously a top five potential pick who fell in the draft due to contracting mono, and who subsequently was supposed to be on the Leafs top pairing by now.  He isn’t, but that doesn’t make him a bust.  Far from it.

In 141 games with the Toronto Marlies Liljegren has established himself as one of the best defenseman in the AHL, and won a championship.  He still projects to be an above average NHLer, maybe even with a shot of becoming something like a T.J Brodie. (Though realistically, Brodie is about as good as you can be without being a “star” and that’s a high level to reach).

Liljegren only played in two games this season, but I thought he looked good in both of them.  Keep in mind this is a very small sample size, but playing 25 minutes, across two games, mostly with Travis Dermott, the Leafs attempted 30 shots while allowing just 14 attempts, meaning they controlled play and has puck possession for almost 70% of Liljegren’s shifts.

The Leafs outshot their opponents 14 to 6 and posted a 73% expected goals rating with Liljegren on the ice.  Again, it’s two games, and a tiny sample size, but the results are encouraging.

Liljegren looks to be a   confident  and intelligent player. He may not have the raw talent of a Morgan Rielly, but he looks good out on the ice and I wouldn’t be worried if he had to start a game in the playoffs.  He is only 22 and while it seems like he’s been a Top Prospect forever, the facts are that 22 year old defenseman who are among the best players in the AHL tend to eventually become solid NHL players. (all stats naturalstattrick.com).

The Toronto Maple Leafs top pairing of the future could still be Sandin on the left and Liljegren on the right.  I suspect that sometime during next season Liljegren will supplant Justin Holl on the Leafs second pairing (sooner if Holl gets lost to expansion).