Toronto Maple Leafs Prospects: Risers and Fallers 2024

Fallers

The fallers category this season, mainly consists of players who are at risk of hitting a glass ceiling with their time running out as legitimate prospects. There are also players who have

Nick Abruzzese

Originally drafted in 2019, Abruzzese has been a prolific scorer at every level. He was drafted as a double overager from the USHL’s Chicago Steel where he lead the entire league in scoring. Then, the following season he attended Harvard University and was tied for third in scoring in the entire NCAA and lead all freshman. 

He was named to Team USA’s roster at the 2022 Winter Olympics and was tied for second in team scoring. A few months later he left college and signed his entry-level deal with the Leafs. He played nine games with the Leafs recording his first NHL goal and point. Since then, he has been a top-six forward on the Marlies and has only played two NHL games, recording two more assists. 

Despite a slight uptick in production from 0.7 points-per-game to 0.73 this past year, Abruzzese was not called up at any point. He also has not seemed to take the necessary steps to force himself onto the NHL roster for next year. Unfortunately in the world of prospects if you’re not progressing, you’re regressing and at 25 years old, he is in a do-or-die spot for his NHL future. 

Alex Steeves

Similar to Abruzzese, Steeves has been impressive but stagnant for the last few seasons, adapting to the professional game from College quite well. He has finished as a top-three Marlies scorer for each of the past three seasons and has been able to not look out of place in his brief NHL stints.

Despite this, he was only able to crack the roster one game last year and with a large logjam in front of him, it seems like a tall task for him to crack the roster. All of these mixed in with the fact that multiple players have seemingly leaped over him on the depth chart already over the past few seasons, do not bode well for Steeves. Hopefully, he can impress the new coach and see an increased opportunity this year after signing a one-year extension last month.

Vyacheslav Peksa

Peksa experienced some major growing pains this past year and as a combination of his performance as well as Hildeby's meteoric rise and Akhtyamov's impressive KHL run, Peksa seems to have fallen quite a bit down the depth chart. He played 19 games with the Newfoundland Growlers of the ECHL and posted a 5-11-1 record and a .890 SV%.

He ranked dead last in terms of save percentage and games played of all three Growlers netminders to play 10 or more games. There has been quite a bit of turnover in the Leafs goaltending pipeline, making it hard to project where he will play this season. As of right now, he likely finds himself back in the ECHL with the Leafs' new affiliate, the Cincinnati Cyclones where he will hope to take on the starting role and have a bounce back year.

Wyatt Schingoethe

Listed as a defensively-minded center, Schingoethe unsurprisingly does not produce a lot with only a single goal and six total points through 56 games with Western Michigan of the NCAA. However, this lack of production calls his viability as a prospect into question, given in most instances, even the best defensive players in the NHL are capable of producing in the lower levels. As a seventh round pick in 2020, his NHL future was already slim but unless he can find another gear, it seems almost nonexistent at this point.

Regardless of the fallers, there are still quite a number of legitimate NHL prospects throughout the pool and it is not necessarily an indictment on an individual players NHL outlook. This list is more to keep track of their trendlines and see where each player is at in their development curve.

Progress is not always linear as we all know and there is definitely the possibility that these players can still become legitimate and successful NHL players in the future.