Bad Drafting Haunts the Toronto Maple Leafs to This Day
By James Tanner
2016 NHL Entry Draft
The Toronto Maple Leafs once again had a terrible draft in 2016 (outside of getting Auston Matthews, obviously).
Just like 2015, this would haunt the Leafs to this very day.
Whether a player develops into a someone that plays for the Leafs or ends up being traded, it’s important to draft talented players that can become assets to the team in the future.
The Leafs have demonstrated no ability to this, virtually ever, in the history of their franchise. It is possible, though not guaranteed, that the last three Dubas years turn out to be very good, but at this point it’s a major unknown and no Leafs fan in their right mind would bet on it.
11 more picks in 2016 show that the Leafs had the right idea – to rebuild, you go with quantity.
Unfortunately, like going 0-11 in elimination games, the worst case scenario basically played out.
Other than Matthews and Marner, and possibly Joseph Woll, the Leafs go nothing out of the two drafts where they picked their franchise players.
Let’s give them credit for Woll, so discounting Matthews and Marner, they went 1 for 18 on picks in these two years. If they let a monkey spin a wheel to decide they literally would have done better.
Out of the 11 players drafted that day, only Matthews and Carl Grundstrom have played more than 50 NHL games.
Other players drafted were Egor Korshkov, Woll, J.D Greenway, Adam Brooks, Keaten Middleton, Vladimir Boblev, Jack Walker, Nickolas Mattinen, and Nickolai Chebykin.
Awful.