Bad Drafting Haunts the Toronto Maple Leafs to This Day
By James Tanner
The Toronto Maple Leafs have a surprising amount of talent in their farm system for a team that currently has the longest streak of making the playoffs in the NHL.
The Toronto Maple Leafs haven ‘t made a high draft pick since 2016, and spent the majority of the years before 2018 making bad picks.
To wit: the 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 drafts, were the Leafs got Marner, Matthews and Liljegren, were completely wasted, outside the top picks.
Had the Leafs drafted better when they were getting and developing their core players, they likely already would have won a Championship.
Bad Drafting Haunts the Toronto Maple Leafs to This Day
Brendan Shanhanan, Lou Lamoriello, Mark Hunter and Kyle Dubas all deserve blame for the horrible drafting that continues to haunt the Toronto Maple Leafs.
To be fair, the Leafs might already have won a Stanley Cup with just a little bit of luck, but that’s a talk for another time.
Right now, let’s explore the four drafts where the Toronto Maple Leafs set the course of their team for the next decade. The drafts where they got all their two best players (and 2017) which, despite yielding some of the best players in franchise history, continue to haunt the team to this day.
What haunts the Leafs is the knowledge that had they hit on just one or two better players during these years, everything would have been different.
Think about it: they were a top contender despite bad drafting, a frozen cap and bad timing signing their core, in addition to trying to compete for years without any cap space. (stats for this article, and draft information hockeydb.com and cap info from capfriendly.com).
Had they found their Brayden Point, Kris Letang, or Duncan Keith – i.e a low drafted superstar to augment their top picks, they would have been unstoppable. Had they found just a couple above average players, they’d likely have done significantly better.