Bench Life Sports

This is Kyle Dubas’ first draft at the helm of the Toronto Maple Leafs warship. Toronto has the 25th overall pick, and as the following list will show you, this range of the draft is incredibly hit or miss. If the Leafs are going to make the jump from first round playoff fodder to full-blown contender, they will have to hit on these picks in order to give their core of Matthews, Marner and Nylander a solid and affordable supporting cast.

2017 Ryan Poehling, Montreal

Poehling was the youngest player in the NCAA when the Habs took him in last year’s draft. It seemed like a weird pick at the time, but the center from St. Cloud State had an excellent 2017-18 that saw him score 31 points in 36 college games as well as center the US’s top line at the World Juniors. April’s Hockey News “Future Watch” has him ranked as  the 37th best prospect in hockey and Montreal’s top prospect. 

2016 Riley Tufte, Dallas

The early returns on the Stars taking aren’t great. He’s a massive 6’6″ winger who is clearly a development project for the organization. Some of the players taken right after him seem to have had a quicker impact. The Blues took Tage Thompson with the next pick and he’s already gotten into 41 NHL games and Sam Steel taken with the 30th pick is the ranked by The Hockey News as the NHL’s 17th best prospect. When all is said and done, you cant teach size and Tufte could still develop into a nice player.

2015 Jack Raslovic, Winnipeg

Raslovic was Winnipeg’s top prospects going into the season and ended up getting some major play with the big squad. Raslovic got into 31 regular season games and 10 playoff games for the Jets. At the AHL level Raslovic has been racking up points with 83 points in 97 games with the Manitoba Moose over the last two seasons. Great value for a late 20’s pick.

2014 David Pastrnak, Boston

Probably the best player on this list, Pasta is a home run at 25th. Out of players taken in the 2014 draft, Pastrnak leads the mall with 94 goals and only Leon Draisaitl has more than his 203 point. Just looking back at this draft, there were a tonne of misses ahead of Pastrnak.

Dal Colle? Jake Virtanen? Julius Honka? Sonny Milano? Get outta here.

2013 Michael McCarron, Montreal

McCarron is a bit of a miss. He’s still young enough that he can be classified as a prospect, but the fact that he only has 69 career NHL games and only 18 with Montreal last year is a bit of a red flag. He’s got the size and frame to potentially stick as a bottom six guy but he’s just to slow and doesn’t have enough jam to pretend to still be a blue chipper.

2012 Jordan Schmaltz, St. Louis

It takes a while for defensemen to crack the NHL full-time but, at age 24, Schmaltz is running out of time. To his credit he has been pretty solid in the AHL and the Blues have kept him in th organization so there’s clearly still something there.

2011 Stuart Percy, Toronto

 

Yikes. This pick was the first rounder that the Leafs got from the Flyers for Kris Versteeg. This was also the infamous draft where the Leafs traded the 30th overall pick and 39th overall pick to Anaheim to move up and select Tyler Biggs at 22. Who did Anaheim take with those two picks? Rickard Rackell and John Gibson. Percy is no longer in the Leafs organization with only 12 career NHL games and Biggs is chilling in the ECHL with the Kalamazoo Wings. What an unmitigated disaster. Brian Burke’s finest masterpiece.

2010 Quinton Howden, Florida

What do Sidney Crosby, Ryan Getzlaf, Matt Duchene and Quinton Howden have in common? They’ve all played for Canada at the Olympics. What sets Howden apart from the rest is fact that he’s the only one to wash out of the NHL scene. Howden moved to the KHL this year and capitalized on the NHL boycotting the Olympics. To his credit Howden played pretty well for the Dinamo Minsk this year and I wouldn’t be shocked to see an NHL take a chance on him down the line.

2009 Jordan Caron, Boston

Sure he was a bit of a bust, but he’s allegedly dated Genie Bouchard so that’s kind of cool. Last year he played 8 games for the DEL’s Krefeld Pinguine and it looks like we have probably seen the last of him as an NHL talent.

2008 Greg Nemisz

Nemisz rode shotgun to Taylor Hall and Ryan Ellis to two Memorial Cups with the Spitfires and parlayed that junior success to the first round of the NHL draft. The Flames gave him a 15 game cup of coffee seven years ago. He hung up the skates in 2015 to become a full-time assistant coach with the OHL’s Oshawa Generals.