2024 Draft: Leafs select Nathan Mayes with pick 225

The Maple Leafs selected Nathan Mayes with the 225th pick in the 2024 Entry Draft.

Mayes is a defenceman who shoots left and is currently playing for the Spokane Chiefs in the WHL. He is listed on Elite Prospects at a tall 6'4 and 194 pounds.

Nathan Mayes really made the commentary go from, "not looking like Spokane's going to get any kind of a look" to "here's maybe one second to make a liar out of me" to "OH MY GOODNESS."

Oh yea, and it's his first career WHL goal!@spokanechiefs pic.twitter.com/r9Sb0oGCby
— The WHL (@TheWHL) February 10, 2024

Here's a scouting report from the Elite Prospects draft guide:

When projecting defencemen, it sometimes comes down to flashes more than anything. Flashes were in abundance with Nathan Mayes, a low-scoring, but impressive blueliner. It doesn't hurt that he's one of the youngest players in the draft, too.

Mayes is a hard-hitting, aggressive defender who makes the occasional play on the breakout. He brings a bit of rush defence value, off-puck threat elimination, retrieval skill, and a lot of violence. If he can't win the positioning battle, he still overpowers opponents and traps them along the boards.

With the puck, Mayes showcases a desire to create at times. He finds quick, controlled options, and occasionally peels the puck off the wall and finds the high-value target.

With those flashes, there's a lot of projection here. Mayes is more of a reactive defenceman; not really controlling opponents or anticipating their next move. His handling skill greatly limits his vision, and his offensive game rarely appeared in our viewings.

If Mayes successfully builds off these flashes, he could be an NHLer. More likely, he's a solid organizational depth.

As mentioned above, Hayes was literally the last pick in the whole NHL Draft. The Leafs acquired this pick earlier today from the Florida Panthers as a throw in to a deal where they essentially punted the second round pick they had (originally the Bruins pick) out to next year with this one as compensation.

Whether or not we'll ever see a 225th overall pick in the draft play for the Leafs or even the Marlies is questionable, but Ryan Tverberg was selected at #213 in the 2020 draft when he was playing out of the University of Connecticut and now he's solid on the Marlies and he made it up to #17 on our summer 2023 Leafs Top 25 Under 25 (2024 edition starting in about one month!).

So the pick is a lottery ticket, and while you don't make spending plans for the possible winnings of a lottery ticket, you still keep it tucked safely in your wallet until the drawing date, taking it out every once and while and making sure it's still in good condition, because you never know.

And so that's it. Not only have the Leafs now made all of their selections in this draft, but every team has. All the families and NHL staff and media are out partying on the Strip in Vegas, and that means you should have a holiday weekend party too now, at least while you can. After all, we're not done for this long weekend.

The big news announced simultaneously with this pick was the Leafs acquiring the rights to free agent Chris Tanev, which included a seventh round pick for 2025 and Max Ellis. We have more on that here: