The Toronto Maple Leafs System Both Incredible and Underrated

The Toronto Maple Leafs System Is Very Strong, Very Underrated

The Toronto Maple Leafs system is incredible, and it’s also very underrated.

What makes it incredible is that even though they haven’t picked highly in years, their system includes 10 players who are reasonable bets to make the NHL, and most of them have incredible upside.  Given the context, this is impressive.

Unable to draft the slam-dunk stars at the top of the draft, the Leafs created an ideal player and then continually sought him out.

This ideal player is, first and foremost, smart.  Hockey Sense.  Thinking the Game.  A High Hockey IQ.  Every single player in the Leafs top ten is identified as such.

It makes sense: players who are obviously talented will get snapped up early. Players with talent and flaws are who you are left to sift through for your selections.  But you know everyone there is reasonably talented.

But if you have two equally talented players, you can train, coach, teach and develop the smarter play a lot easier.  Thus, it makes sense to seek out this particular skill.

Secondly, the Leafs take players who are hard workers.  Again, the same logic applies: if you have two equally talented players, take the one who seems to be the harder worker.

If you are able to take players who are BOTH hard workers and intelligent, then over time, you should start to show a lot more success at picking players than average.  We don’t yet know if this will work.  I can sit here and say I think it will, but I’m risking nothing to do so.  And I run a dedicated Leafs sight.  You should take my pro-Leafs positions with a grain of salt.

But not a whole canister.

I’m not sitting here trying to tell you that Alex Steeves will be a superstar, or that anyone in the Leafs system is the next Braydon Point, or that anyone here is as good as the Duck’s fifth best prospect.

All I am trying to say is that instead of making the draft into a total crapshoot, the Toronto Maple Leafs have come up with a way to try and beat the system.  So far, their non-name-brand Top 10 looks impressive, in that every single players is offensively talented, smart, and extremely hardworking.

But that’s it.  Still, I think optimism is warranted.