Lets go back to 1998 when the Leafs owned their first 1st round pick since 1995. The leafs top five scorers at the time where as such.
Fowards
Mats Sundin 82GP 33-41-74
Mike Johnson 82GP 15-32-47
Derek King 77GP 21-25-46
Igor Korolev 78GP 17-22-39
Fredrik Modin 74GP 16-16-32
Only One forward (Mats Sundin) to hit the 30 goal mark while only one other player (Mike Johnson) hit the 20. The post dougy years didn't look to good to start with.
Top 3 Defence
Mathieu Schneider 76GP 11-26-37 (Should of never traded him to the rangers for nothing!)
Jason Smith 81GP 3-13-16 (Him to ended up getting Jonathon Zion and Kris Vernarsky for him woho!)
Dmitri Yushkevich 72GP 0-12-12
Goales at the time were potvin and crack a head healy.
So Our good old leafs end up with the 10th overall pick in the draft the highest in a while but the leafs certainly know how to waste picks.
With that tenth overall pick we select Nikolai Antropov Moscow 30GP 5-9-14
although he was playing with man. He had years of average play never topping the 60 point mark considering he was one of the highest european porspects in the world at the time.
Some of the names that could of been dawning the leafs uniform include:
Simon Gange QMJHL 61GP 50-70-120 (you pass up on a guy who has 120points in junior!!)
Alex Tanguay QMJHL 31GP 27-34-61
Scott Gomez WHL 58GP 30-78-108 (Again passing up on another 100 point player)
Brad Richards (This one kills me) QMJHL 63GP 71 115 186( a near 200 points and he slipt till the 3rd)
Any one of these candidates would of looked nicely with Sundin. But lets say we picked Gange out of this draft.
Gange-Sundin-?
The 1999 nhl draft after a better but still lousy season the leafs end up with the 24th overall pick and select:
Luca Cereda Swiss-A 43GP 1-5-6
Pretty high up for a guy a the time no one has really heard of before. And who went two spots after him?
Martin Havlat (who had a respectable Czech 46GP 13-29-42 almost keeping up a ppg in a mens league as a kid)
And we found our right winger. Our current lineup would then look like.
Gange-Sundin-Havlat
Hoglund- Igor Korolev-Steve Thomas
Sergei Berezin-Yanic Perreault-Dmitri Khristich
Darcy Tucker-Alyn McCauley-Tie Domi
I did not count wendel clark or steve sullivan in because they play limited games.
Continue with the build.
2000 saw us land the same 24th overall pick but maybe with better luck this time?
Yes the leafs finally made a good choice and selected.
Brad Boyes OHL 47GP 36-41-77 (finding themself a young offensive star who was a ppg player anywhere he went)
This was a very good pick by the leafs only passing up on Zetteberg but only the gods in detroit find gems like him.
2001 saw us land the 17th overall pick and we selected
Carlo Colaiacovo OHL 35GP 14 21 35 (a home town boy who had a solid season but it was another hometown boy we should of focused on)
Mike Cammalleri 49th Overall NCAA 28GP 23-20-43
2002 saw us land our lucky number again Pick 24. And with that pick we selected
Alexander Steen SEL 50GP 9 8 17
A prospect we could of had.
Cam Ward 56gp 31-16-80.926 (Huge numbers best in the CHL at the time)
We did not have a first round pick in 2003 which is what I am focusing on. We did not own one in 2004 either thanks to leetch and his 30 games.
The crosby lottery, The leafs ended up wit the 21 overall pick in 2005 selecting
Tuukka Rask 30GP 12 7 8 0.926 ( A great pick but the the earlier pick of ward wouldn't be needed so we go ahead and select:
Paul Stansy NCAA 39GP 19 34 53
A young gun who was said at the time to be the best out of the NCAA.
Now the leafs are at a time where all the teams around are getting better with bonified superstars on there teams and with the new current draftees we have a lineup that includes:
Note: Alot of the picks we could of had made sense in terms of point production in their junior league.
Alot of the aquistions such as Leetch, Francis, Molginy would not of happened throughout the years with this drafting. With a team like this the leafs are ready to compete but not contend yet. So here comes the 2006 Draft.
We owned the 13th overall pick and select
Jiri Tlusty(isnt he your favorite here in Toronto) Czech 44GP 7 3 10
Now this guy still has a upside so who knows
But one guy I wish we drafted was
Milan Lucic 50th overall (the Climax)
WHL 70GP 30-38-68 147PIM
2007 saw us throw away a bunch of picks for Toskosuck and we had no first rounder. But who knows if that would of happend?
Now with a big improvement with the team we did not expect to land a 5th overall pick and land scheen but lets we excited 2nd round playoffs and had the 28th overall pick and select.
Jared Staal - Hockey runs in the family you know. OHL 67GP 19 33 52
touted to be the best but i dont know abou that.
2009 we make it to the third round just to get bet by crosby and his pens but we end up with a 29th overall pick and select.
What is your point? That we missed out and could have drafted some excellent players back in 1998 that could have changed our fortunes? How do you know. Secondly, were you a scout back in 1998? So your saying "what might have been" Whats the point of this thread that we missed out on some solid prospects that turned out to be great? It happens every year. The draft is a gamble.
One more thing. Do you realize how stupid you sound? We had a first round pick. Zetterberg went late in that years draft. Explain why every other team passed up on him in the first few rounds?
Oh and one more thing cap space my friend. This is not NHL 2K10.
I know that you are being hypothetical and all but this all doesn't really mean much because it isn't realistic. It's like me saying what if I turned left instead of right yesterday and I seen a dog on the floor which led me into an alley way in which the 3rd of 4 dumpsters had a $50 million dollar lottery ticket contained in it that happened to not be signed so I cashed it in and live life like a millionaire.
How would all of our lives look if we had a crystal ball? Everything is uncertain and thats how life is. We just try to make the best decisions with what we got.
You could make a thread like this about every team in the league. How about we embrace the fact that we've drafted pretty good in the last few years. Whats done is done, Stop your complaining and look towards the future.
Another thing, whats with everyone thinking Jared's going to be the best Staal, having seen all of them play I'd say he is at the bottom of the four by far.
I almost stopped reading after you quoted the stats of the top 5 scoring forwards and claimed Mike Johnson was the only other 20 goal scorer, when in fact he wasn't even a 20 goal, it was Derek King- as stated by your quoted stats. But I was tempted to continue to read on and I wish I hadn't. You wanted to make a fantastical and hypothetical point, I see that, but c'mon, reliving the past like that while spelling Simon Gagne's name wrong countless times is not going to help convey what your mind sees at legitimacy.
Not to mention the "Leafs of today" in a "perfect world without a salary cap" very likely wouldn't include the likes of Sundin (retired), Stalberg (we'd be soo good we wouldn't need rooks out of college hockey), Havlat (need I say more? Inconsistency, injuries, overpaid, overrated), and that defence is still terribly sub-par with the likes of Exelby and Finger.
And to think, not drafting $7.8m man Brad Richards who's been mediocre for the past few seasons is the lost treasure that "kills" you...
I hate these threads. Yeah, Leaf drafting has been horrid for many, many years. There have been ups (Stalberg, Stajan, White, Kaberle, et al- of those that are still here) but several more downs (those that you mentioned +). Seriously, we're reminded of it enough, we don't need our own 'fans' beating down the morale with unrealistic threads projecting unrealistic probabilities.
that team kind of still sucks. think of the money you would have to pay havlat and cammalleri, statsney is good, ward is good, but not much of a loss for those exciting playoff runs the leafs had
Through the years the Leafs could have had drafted a number of players...including Joe Sakic, and Scott Niedermayer.
The NHL draft is hard to predict. Some players who are highly touted Junior players end up being NHL flops...including 1st overall picks Alexandre Daigle and Patrik Stefan.
For every bad Leaf draft story, there are still some excellent surprises such as Tomas Kaberle, who was a very late 8th round selection.
In the end, while the draft is important, choosing good players at certain selections is never bullet-proof. Each player develops differently. Some players plateau, some players are poorly developed, while others come out of no-where.
Some Leaf players like Brandon Convery, Jeff Ware and Todd Warriner never became the players everyone thought that they would, even though they were all mid to high first round draft projections.
Marcel Cousineau also was a goalie who never became who everyone thought he would. Again, things would have been different.
Had Convery become the legitimate 2nd line, possibly first line NHLer and the same for Warriner...and Ware become the Luke Schenn of his day things might have looked remarkably different.
Part of this had to do with the poor Leafs scouting and projections, the other part, had to do with the poor player development programs. The St. Johns program for years was not a good place for AHL player development, not because of the place or the fans but because of the management and coaching.
The hindsight game sucks. Do us a favour; if you ever see Brian Burke, tell him this so he'll have an excuse to demonstrate some truculence on you.
Yup, the Leafs could have been the best team in the NHL if they only had a time machine. You could make this argument for every single sports team that ever existed.
What in the world. If his last name was not Staal he would be playing in the beers.
