How does the Leafs prospect pool stack up against others around the league?

Good news, there is no trophy awarded to the team with the best prospect pool. In fact, having a shallow prospect pool is generally a sign that you are doing things right and are one of the top teams in the league. The Maple Leafs draft late in each round and that’s only when they actually hold onto their picks. The fact that Toronto is close to a decade of qualifying for the playoffs shows that they’ve likely been trade deadline shoppers for near equal length of time.

That being said, you can point to a lot of moments that didn’t even really require the benefit of hindsight to know they would play out poorly. Paying premium prices on players like Tomas Plekanec, Joel Edmundson, Luke Schenn, Ilya Lyubushkin, Scott Laughton, Nick Foligno, David Rittich, etc. weren’t ideal.

On the flip side of things, how often do we hear about how great the prospect pools are for teams like the Ducks, Sabres, and Senators are? And while some players emerge that help improve their lineup, most of the players that even considered success stories are marginal second line/second pairing talent that are exciting/cheap alternatives to the same players that go on to be similar to the players that the Leafs have been adding at the deadline. Outside of true game changing players taken at the top of the draft, the bar doesn’t move much and path out of the basement seems to be largely based on being really bad in the right draft years.

There’s also something to how prospect pools are assessed and there are a number of biases and skewed data that comes into play here. There’s a lot of excitement for systems with a lot of high picks in them, understandably. There’s a lot of excitement for players that are putting up big numbers, understandably. And there is a lot of excitement for players with size, strength, and talent that noticeably stands out next to their peers. All of that makes sense, except that none of it guarantees success at the NHL level and even amongst the systems full of blue chip prospects, most of those blue chips just guarantee them a look before they just become an interesting list of names on free agency lists at 25 and we all say “wow, I thought they were going to be huge” before debating the merits of giving them an AHL contract.

So, no, the Leafs system isn’t deep, but it has so encouraging pieces to it.

Easton Cowan has top six forward potential and could challenge for a look in the NHL this fall. That’s not a bad piece for an organization that had another recent success story in Matthew Knies.

Ben Danford is another player of legitimate interest. Although further out from a readiness standpoint and may lack the ceiling of a star player, he could very easily fill an important role on the Leafs blueline someday.

After that, the Leafs have a number of players that are worth trusting to their player development program. Noah Chadwick, Tinus Luc Koblar, Tyler Hopkins, Miroslav Holinka, as well as more raw prospects like Harry Nansi, William Belle, Sam McCue, and Victor Johansson are smart long term projects for the Maple Leafs and a smart attempt at getting something out of a program that relies on late round upside, college free agents, and well scouted but off the radar selections within the first few rounds of the draft.

The end result can be summed up well by Steven Ellis, who has been looking at every organizations prospect depth charts:

It’s still not a strong pipeline, but it’s legitimately deeper. The team has options at every position, and while most aren’t going to be impact players, they need as much depth as they can get. Toronto’s focus is on winning right now, but having some legit help either down the road at Coca-Cola Coliseum or marinating in Europe could go a long way.

With the Leafs biggest area of concern being high end talent it is again worth remembering that the way they’d get that is by missing the playoffs. That’s not going to be in the cards for at least another three seasons, but injuries can always throw you a curveball. And if the Leafs are making trades, they are very unlikely to be dealing a roster player who would net them a first or second round pick. They need those players in their lineup and as this free agency period and summer has shown, landing a bona fide top talent isn’t particularly easy and dumping one for futures in the offseason isn’t particularly well advised either.

So well the Leafs prospect pool might not look particularly good at the moment, it’s worth appreciating that neither does the prospect pools for the Panthers, Lightning, Oilers, Avalanche, or Golden Knights. Take the weak comparisons as a badge of honour and also remember the number of players that still manage to emerge from these systems largely because of development.

Player Development is the great equalizer when it comes to prospects and the Leafs appear to be one of the best resourced teams in the league in that regard. It might also be a matter of having the right development personnel and the right AHL coaches to fit what the Leafs are hoping to achieve, but if money talks, the Leafs spending a lot in this area is a positive sign.

If there is a significant drawback to the depleted state of the Leafs prospect pool it might be that there will be fewer opportunities to deal prospects for roster players at coming deadlines and over the summers. Between teams watching their own prospect development as well as scouting for the draft, having excitement around a prospect helps make them marketable in trade. And with few Leafs prospects receiving consideration for the World Juniors, and most being projects with specifically targeted depth roles in mind, the opportunity to deal futures becomes limited.

There is also some uncertainty about the importance of a deep prospect pool going forward. The new Collective Agreement, the rising salary cap, and the likely expansion of the league in the coming years, as well as CHL players being able to play in the NCAA will all have an impact on this aspect of Hockey Operations going forward and while having a strong talent pool to lean on is always a beneficial thing, the Leafs not comparing favourably in this regard might not matter as much as it did a couple of years ago.