TLN’s February Maple Leafs prospect rankings: 20-16

A break in the NHL schedule to accommodate the long-awaited return of best-on-best international competition should provide NHL management teams with the opportunity to take stock of where they’re at and how they’ve progressed since the beginning of the season. Today, we’re going to begin the same exercise with the Maple Leafs’ prospect pool, starting with the 20th-ranked prospect in the system and working our way down to number one.

For a team like the Leafs, who have shipped out numerous draft picks in recent years in pursuit of playoff success, it’s not surprising that the bottom end of their prospect pipeline amounts to long shots and potential depth contributors at the pro level. The players listed below still have their work cut out for them to carve out careers in the NHL, but they all possess different tools that could help them reach that goal in the years to come.

20 | Nathan Mayes | LHD | Spokane (WHL) | Drafted: 2024, 7th round, 225th overall

Holding the final pick in last summer’s draft, the Leafs made Spokane defender Nathan Mayes the “Mr. Irrelevant” of the 2024 class, but he’s taken strides to shed that label with the Chiefs this season. His offensive production has improved from his draft year, with more goals and points at the halfway mark than he had all of last season, and he has become a more composed defender as well.

Mayes wasn’t drafted for his offensive ability but rather for his bruising, physically engaged style of defence. He is aggressive in seeking out contact, whether it be shutting down a cycle or stepping up at the blue line to negate a clean entry for the opposition, but he still struggles with picking his spots at times. Mayes can be beaten laterally off the rush when his aggressive nature gets the best of him, but he excels at retrieving pucks and shielding off forecheckers with his large frame at the junior level. He shows flashes of puck-moving skill, but he doesn’t have great hands, and he struggles to process things in the offensive end on the occasions where he joins the rush. Mayes’ physical tools have helped him succeed in the WHL, but he will have to improve his overall processing speed and puck skills to become anything more than AHL depth.

19 | Cade Webber | LHD | Toronto (AHL) | Acquired via trade w/Carolina

Webber is a player the Leafs deliberately targeted ahead of last year’s trade deadline as he was wrapping up his NCAA career, but he is still very much a project. A former fourth-round pick of the Carolina Hurricanes, the Leafs dealt a future sixth-rounder for Webber’s NHL rights before signing him to an entry-level contract last spring, and they have since signed him to a two-year extension.

Webber is a monster of a man, standing 6’7″ and weighing over 210 pounds, and he made a name for himself as a legitimate shutdown defender over four seasons at Boston University. He is a fearless shot-blocker, and his size allows him to effectively box out opposing players around his net while simultaneously clogging up shooting lanes. Webber has worked to add more physicality to his game in his first year as a pro, but the pace of the pro game has proven to be an issue he’ll have to overcome. There is next to no offence in Webber’s game, and he certainly isn’t your prototypical puck-mover on the back end, but it isn’t a stretch to think he could grow into a bottom-pairing defender with added reps in the AHL. His size will certainly provide him with plenty of opportunities.

18 | Mikko Kokkonen | LHD | Toronto (AHL) | Drafted: 2019, 3rd round, 84th overall

Kokkonen has been in the Leafs’ system for a while now, but his time might be running out. It looked like he had taken a step forward last fall, earning praise from former head coach Sheldon Keefe and sticking around late into Leafs camp, but he appears to have fallen back down the depth chart under the Treliving/Berube regime.

The 2019 third-rounder is a defence-first player with average size who gets the job done with smart reads and an active stick. He doesn’t have standout speed or skill, and he isn’t particularly physical, but he can stop the cycle and make a sharp first pass to get play going the other way. He will occasionally join the rush, and he has shown more offensive ability in the AHL than he did during his years in Liiga, but it isn’t a differentiating quality in his tool kit. Overall, Kokkonen is a fine player but also unexceptional in any one area, and with his contract coming to an end after this season, he could be destined for a return to Finland if the Leafs opt not to extend a qualifying offer his way.

17 | Ty Voit | W | Cincinnati (ECHL) | Drafted: 2021, 5th round, 153rd overall

There’s really no other way to put it: Ty Voit has been dealt a tough hand. First, he missed the entirety of his draft year when the OHL shut down during the pandemic. After entering the draft cycle as a potential first or second-round pick, he fell to the Leafs in the fifth round and went on to become one of the OHL’s most dominant offensive players over the next two seasons. It looked like Voit was set to hit the ground running to begin his pro career, but an injury in the Traverse City Prospects Tournament delayed his start to the season, and when he did finally make his Marlies debut, he suffered a shoulder injury on his very first shift that cost him the rest of the season.

Voit’s offensive vision and playmaking ability have never really been in question, but his lack of size and strength scared some teams away in the draft process. Perhaps there is some unfortunate luck involved as well, but that lack of size and strength has proven to be an issue as he has dealt with various injuries early in his pro career. Voit helps mitigate those concerns with quick hands and good feet that allow him to spin off checks and make plays in tight spaces, and he doesn’t need much room to identify an open target and hit it with a crisp pass. He can manipulate coverages and create lanes with hook passes or feeds into open areas, and he has the ability to finish chances around the net on his own. Unfortunately, the lost development time might be too much for Voit to re-establish himself under a new management team that values size and heavy skill more than the regime that drafted him. He has been relegated to the ECHL for the entire season, but he still possesses the raw skill to make an impact and take advantage of an opportunity against stiffer competition, should that opportunity arise.

16 | Nick Moldenhauer | C/W | Michigan (NCAA) | Drafted: 2022, 3rd round, 95th overall

Moldenhauer was a bit of a late riser in his draft year after missing the first half of the season with a mysterious virus and then a skate cut to the face and neck area that nearly cost him more than a few hockey games. He showcased some hard skill along with some flash for the Chicago Steel down the stretch that season, and the Leafs’ connections to the Steel made drafting the Mississauga native an easy decision when he fell to the back half of the third round. Moldenhauer returned to the Steel the following season and was one of the top players in the USHL, but he hasn’t been able to take the next step with Michigan in the NCAA, and his game has plateaued somewhat.

Moldenhauer’s versatility made him a valuable contributor for the Wolverines in his freshman season. He was shuffled around the lineup, playing different positions with different linemates, and managed a respectable 21 points in 41 games for one of the top teams in the nation during his first year of college hockey. That stacked roster saw some departures in the offseason, and the hope was that Moldenhauer would be able to step into a larger role and take his game to another level, but that hasn’t happened to this point in the season. Through 23 games, he has scored just once while adding seven assists, and he hasn’t earned the trust of his coaches to play heavier minutes than he did a year ago. There is a lot to like about Moldenhauer’s game when he puts it all together: he is tenacious on the forecheck, he can play through contact and make plays in traffic, he finds teammates in space, and he has good hands around the net. Putting it all together at the collegiate level has been the issue, but if Moldenhauer can add some more pace to his game, there is still a chance for him to develop into a versatile bottom-six forward at the NHL level.

(Statistics from EliteProspects.com)