Toronto Maple Leafs and the NHL Draft: Rounds 4 and 5

We’re getting past the rounds where you’ll find most of a team’s NHL players, and now we’re on to the fourth and fifth rounds. We’ll see some familiar names here but most of the players would never make it to the Maple Leafs.

Starting with the picks by league, it’s once again all OHL, all the time. The QMJHL and WHL take second and third. Also starting in round four there are more and more high school kids taken from the US.

Defenders top the list, but forwards of all positions are all tied up.

Who did round four give us? The most prominent player taken in round four was Alexei Ponikarovsky (1998), who played almost 500 games with the Maple Leafs - 477 - and scored 114 goals, 143 assists for 257 points. No other pick came close to that many games, the next player was Stewart Gavin (1980) who played 268 games, and Darby Hendrickson (1990), Jim Dorey (1964), and James Reimer (2006) top off the players who played more than 200 games as a Maple Leaf. 33 of the 49 players chosen in the fourth round have never played a game as a Maple Leaf, but recent picks like Adam Brooks (2016) and Ian Scott (2017) have plenty of time to get into a game.

The average fourth round pick will play 41 games and score 6 goals, 8 assists for 14 points. If we only look at players who played games it’s 127 games played, 17 goals, 25 assists, and 42 points.

Round Four

Round five is exactly what you’d expect the fifth round to be. A handful of players who played a handful of games and not much else.

Does anyone think the OHL won’t ever be #1 by a mile? Lots of QMJHL players drafted in this round though, which probably explains the lack of success. Kidding Quebec, I love you (whispers to rest of the audience: no I don’t.)

Defenders are not the dominant position this time, with one more centre than defender picked in the fifth round. Only one goalie was picked, and it was the best player from round five, and #58 in the top 100 Maple Leafs of all time: Mike Palmateer (1974)

Palmateer played 296 games as a Leaf, and had 3.44GAA and a .892sv% with 15 shutouts and 16 assists over his Leafs career. After Palmateer, the players with the most games played are Kyle Wellwood (2001) at 189 games and John Mitchell (2003) with 159. Mike Eastwood (1987) is the other player to play over 100 games with 111.

38 players played zero NHL games for the Maple Leafs, and the average pick will play 22 games and score only two goals and four assists for six points. If we only look at the players who played a game, it jumps to 72GP - 7G - 15A - 22Pts.

Round Five

Tomorrow is a long one. We go through rounds six to thirteen (yes, thirteen).