Top 3 Draft Picks That Never Played for the Toronto Maple Leafs

Often times teams will draft a player and trade him before he plays for them – and there’s 3 particular play names that stand out for the Toronto Maple Leafs who they drafted but never played.

It really goes without saying that there’s no judging what a player’s development trajectory looks like, so the Toronto Maple Leafs are certainly not the only team to commit this faux pas.

Given the sheer fact that the Toronto Maple Leafs are an Original Six team, they are statistically among the group most likely to have drafted players and let them slip from their grasps, given they’ve been drafting since the NHL Amateur Draft was formally established back in 1963.

However, when you look through the team’s drafting history, you come across a significant number of players that make it to the NHL and at least end up wearing the Toronto Maple Leafs jersey on a few occasions.

Some of those players are traded early in their career after never cracking the Toronto Maple Leafs roster, before looping back at a much later stage; Brad Boyes being a recent example.

However, the challenge is that sometimes you either have to trade a prospect early in their trajectory and this ends up biting you or there isn’t the roster space or push from the General Manager to opt towards youth.

Both of these stand in the way of making the big league when you’re a young prospect in the system. Let’s also not forget that these young players are always facing internal competition.

In an ideal world, the Toronto Maple Leafs would be able to give every single draft pick at the very least a try-out in the NHL; this is absolutely never going to happen though.

As a result, sometimes the team will decide they prefer one player over another and allow the other to be traded, walk to free agency or otherwise depart the club.

The regret on these is seldom immediate either; in fact it’s fair to say there’s been times where the mistake of trading a player isn’t realized until years afterwards.

Still, there’s always that slight bitter taste left in the mouth when you see players establish themselves as useful players elsewhere when you know they could’ve been playing for the Toronto Maple Leafs from the start.

#3. Shawn Thornton (190th overall, 1997 NHL Entry Draft)

Ranking third on this list is the Toronto Maple Leafs seventh-round (190th overall) pick from the 1997 NHL Entry Draft, Shawn Thornton.

Now, this isn’t to say that the Toronto Maple Leafs haven’t drafted more talented players that never played for the club but it’s hard to overlook the fact that Thornton played a role in two different teams’ Stanley Cup wins.

Looking at the fact he was a seventh-round pick, there was never any guarantees that Shawn Thornton would elevate above the minor leagues, but to his credit he absolutely did.

Shawn Thornton never played for the Leafs, finding himself traded to the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2001-02 season for minor-leaguer Marty Wilford, before making his NHL debut with 13 games in Chicago the next season.

Unfortunately for him, it is one of his career regrets given he grew up in Oshawa cheering for the Maple Leafs, but that’s the sometimes cruel nature of the hockey business.

What stands out about Shawn Thornton during his NHL career is his remarkable longevity in the minors, spending the best part of 9 seasons in the AHL before finally making it stick with a 48-game stint for the Anaheim Ducks.

Call it luck or call it playing his role, but that first (and only) season as a member of the Anaheim Ducks eventuated in his first Stanley Cup.

Playing in an era that still iced enforcers on the fourth line, Shawn Thornton was the type of player that knew exactly his role on the team and got out there and got on with it, whether in the AHL or the NHL.

Following his season with the Ducks, he joined the Boston Bruins and that’s where he really made it stick as an NHL role player with 7 seasons for them, including a second Stanley Cup and a further trip to the Stanley Cup Final.

For a player that was weighing up his options after his time in Chicago, it was a considerable turnaround to his career and speaks volumes of his overriding desire to be a Stanley Cup winner.

To play his role in achieving that goal twice, he definitely deserves a mention as a bit of a ‘what might have been’ for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

#2. Doug Jarvis (24th overall, 1975 NHL Amateur Draft)

Number two on the list is Doug Jarvis, a player far more associated with the Montreal Canadiens than the Toronto Maple Leafs, but a player that was indeed the team’s second-round (24th overall pick) in the 1975 NHL Amateur Draft.

Doug Jarvis won four Stanley Cups as a member of the Montreal Canadiens dynasty in the 1970s; that’s not to say that he’s the reason for that, but he certainly played his part as part of the team. Jarvis is somewhat unique when you consider the style of hockey being plays in the seventies.

The team to win the Stanley Cup before the Canadiens was the ‘Broad Street Bullies’ iteration of the Philadelphia Flyers after all. All the while, Jarvis literally peaked at just 34 penalty minutes in a season across his NHL career.

Perhaps the reason most people know Doug Jarvis’ name is his legendary ‘Ironman’ streak; 12 seasons and 964 consecutive games in a tough-as-nails era where hits were heavy and players lacked the conditioning of a pro we expect these days.

Thinking back to the Toronto Maple Leafs team of the mid-seventies, Lanny McDonald, Borje Salming and Darryl Sittler; Doug Jarvis would’ve been a useful extra extra part of the roster, but realistically he would have struggled to stand-out.

Here’s a player that capitalized on playing a useful role for what was a dynasty team, offering some secondary scoring for a team headlined by Guy Lafleur.

As much as it feels like a miss by the Toronto Maple Leafs, nobody was truly to know that Jarvis could offer anything on an NHL team; though to be fair 133 points in a 64-game season as captain of the Peterborough Petes certainly suggested he might do more than he did.

Perhaps the reason for this to be a hard pill to swallow can be found in the fact that the return on the trade was Greg Hubick, a player that managed just one season with the team.