The 2025 NHL Entry Draft is less than a month away, which means that buzz will soon be ramping up across the league as a new generation of pros arrive. That buzz, however, will likely be considerably quieter in Toronto, where the Toronto Maple Leafs don’t have a pick until the very end of the second round.
With their first-round choice traded away in the Jake McCabe deal and their second-round selection shipped out to unload Nick Ritchie and add Ilya Lyubushkin for the first time, the Maple Leafs wouldn’t even have any picks in the first two rounds had they not acquired a second rounder from the Eastern Conference champion Florida Panthers. Toronto will either land the 63rd or 64th pick in the draft, depending on whether the Panthers fall to the Edmonton Oilers or win their second consecutive Stanley Cup.
But the later rounds have been known to yield some pretty impressive NHL talent in recent years. The Maple Leafs, themselves, benefited by landing Matthew Knies with the 57th-ovearll pick in the 2021 draft. The club has ushered numerous second-rounders into the NHL in recent years, with Travis Dermott, Carl Grundstrom, Sean Durzi, Nicholas Robertson, and Fraser Minten all being drafted by Toronto an finding varying levels of success in the league.
(Mandatory Credit: John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images)
This year, however, will mark the latest draft-opening pick that the Maple Leafs have made since 2007, with the 63rd/64th selection coming later than when any of the aforementioned players came off the board. Still, hitting on a draft pick that late is far from unprecedented. Let’s take a look back at some recent (but not too recent) drafts to see what kind of talent that Toronto can reasonably expect to unearth in the late second round and deeper.
2022 NHL Draft
Patience will be a virtue with whomever the Maple Leafs wind up drafting with their six picks in the 2025 draft. With late-round draftees typically needing more time and opportunities to prove themselves than top blue chippers, it’s no wonder that the last couple of drafts haven’t yielded any significant success stories at the NHL level to date.
The same is mostly true of the 2022 NHL Entry Draft, save for one very notable exception. With the 62nd-overall selection, the Montreal Canadiens drafted defenceman Lane Hutson, who is fresh off a breakthrough rookie season that will likely result in a Calder Trophy victory in the next week. Though just 21 and with merely 84 games under his belt, Hutson is already the third-leading scorer of his draft class and highest-scoring blueliner.
It is rare to find superstar talent so late in the draft, but that seems to be precisely what Montreal has done with Hutson. The Michigan-born puck mover was an integral part of the Canadiens’ surprise postseason berth this past season. Ironically, the club held the first overall pick in the very same draft, selecting Juraj Slavkovsky and, thus, potentially landing the top two players in the class of 2022.
2020 & 2021 NHL Drafts
We’ll group the pandemic drafts together, as they have admittedly been a little thin on impact players falling deeper into the latter rounds. Many of the draft steals, including William Cuylle of the New York Rangers (60th overall, 2020) and Tampa Bay Lightning 2024 offseason addition J.J. Moser (60th overall, 2021), were snatched up with selections earlier than where the Maple Leafs are slated to draft.
If we look beyond each draft’s 60th-overall draft choice, it’s slim pickings. Alex Laferriere (83rd overall, 2020) enjoyed a breakout 19-goal campaign this past season with the Los Angeles Kings and figures to be a key part of their top-six forward corps into the future. Nils Aman (167th overall, 2020) and Emil Lilleberg (107th overall, 2021) have both quietly surpassed the 100-game mark in their NHL careers, with the Vancouver Canucks and Tampa Bay Lightning, respectively. Meanwhile, Jackson Blake (109th overall, 2021) enjoyed a solid 17-goal rookie campaign in Carolina, even if he’s best remembered for being on the receiving end of a dirty hit from Eetu Luostarinen in the Eastern Conference Final.
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2019 NHL Draft
Stars are hard to come by in the deeper reached of the 2019 Draft, but quality NHL players are certainly not. In fact, of the 40 2019 draftees to have played in at least 100 games thus far in their careers, 11 were taken outside of the top-50.
Aliaksei Protas (91st overall), already a veteran of nearly 250 NHL games, is fresh off a surprise 30-goal campaign for a Washington Capitals team that finished with the best record in the Eastern Conference. Pavel Dorofeyev (79th overall) finally became an everyday regular for the Vegas Golden Knights this past season and responded by potting a team-best 35 goals. In one of the final picks of the draft, the Calgary Flames opted to take a flyer on goaltender Dustin Wolf (214th overall), who is now poised to be their No. 1 netminder of the present and future.
Several other clubs also made the most of late-round selections in 2019, with Dimitri Voronkov (11th overall), Mark Kastelic (125th overall), Jordan Spence (95th overall), Henry Thrun (101st overall) and Jusso Parssinen (210th overall) all eventually being drafted into the league that year.
2018 NHL Draft
The Maple Leafs did well at the draft table in 2018, taking Rasmus Sandin in the first round, Durzi in the second and reaping some late success with Pontus Holmberg (156th.) And they weren’t the only team to come away with late-draft finds. Yegor Sharangovich (141st) surpassed 100 career goals this past season, Jack McBain (63rd) has become an impact centre for the Arizona Coyotes and players like Paul Cotter (115th), Philipp Kurashev (120th), former Maple Leaf Connor Dewar (92nd), Jordan Harris (71st) and Michael Kesselring (164th) have established themselves at the NHL level.
The 2018 class has also brought along some late-blooming starting netminders. Lukas Dostal (85th) of the Anaheim Ducks came out of this draft, as did St. Louis Blues backstop Joel Hofer (107th). And though they aren’t fully minted starters, we’ve seen Justus Annunen (64th), Akira Schmid (136th) and Samuel Ersson (143rd) all contribute at the NHL level.
Look, it’s easy to go back and cite names like Luc Robitaille, Brett Hull, and Pavel Datsyuk when discussing famous late-round draft choices who went on to have stellar careers. But rather than recount the odd one-in-a-million pick that happened decades ago, it’s worth realizing that the late stages of the draft produce NHL talent every year. By grabbing late round gems in Knies and Woll and a host of other established NHL players without the benefit of high draft slots, the Maple Leafs have a first-hand knowledge of that draft reality. In a few weeks’ time, they will look to do their best to find late draft value once again.
