Seth Griffith was acquired on October 11 by the Toronto Maple Leafs after the Boston Bruins placed him on waivers. He is a right-shooting right wing who signed a one-year, two-way contract extension last spring for $625,000.
The Votes
There aren't any of course, but where would he have landed on the list of top 25 prospects under 25 if we had voted on him in the summer?
There were two broadly defined voting patterns below the consensus top four. One group went for known quantity over future expectations, and the other more heavily weighted the maximum future potential of a player. Of course, there was a large diversity of opinion, so that is a simplification.
Griffith is a bit like Josh Leivo, Kerby Rychel, Connor Brown and Nikita Soshnikov. He has some NHL games played, he's just over the waiver exemption like Leivo, but those other three are roaring up on it fast. They all seemed NHL ready in the summer, but it isn't clear there is an NHL spot for all of them.
They finished between 18 for Leivo and 5 for Brown. So it's fairly safe to say Griffith would be in there somewhere with the more cautious voters pointing to his actual limited NHL experience, and the more future-oriented voters discussing his skills and AHL performance.
Given that AHL performance last year, he would likely be top 15 if not top 10.
The Player
Junior Years
Griffith is from Wallaceburg, Ontario, which is a small town in Southwestern Ontario dangerously close to Detroit Redwings territory. But Griffith assured the press, he grew up a Leafs fan:
“I’m from Chatham-Kent, I was a Leaf fan, I know the city, I know some of the guys in the dressing room and they’ve made me feel really comfortable. That’s a big part of transitioning.
He was drafted 65th overall by the London Knights (Mark Hunter) in 2009. However, he played the bulk of his post-draft season in the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League. He didn't play a full year of OHL hockey until 2010-2011.
He played three full years in total for the Knights and was an assistant captain in his last year. His career points per game was 1.12, with a slight weight to assists over goals.
Leivo had 0.91, Rychel had 1.06 and Brown had 1.26.
Pro Hockey
In 2012, Griffith was a fifth-round draft pick, taken 131st overall by the Boston Bruins. Brown, remember, was taken that same draft in the 6th round. Griffith however, is almost exactly one year older than Brown and was drafted as an overager.
Why so low? Size, size, size, as it nearly always was and still is. Griffith is listed at 5'9" and 191 lb on the Leafs roster.
He made his pro AHL debut in 2013, playing in Providence, and he did well.
The next year he split time between the AHL Bruins, where he scored well again, and the NHL Bruins where he turned heads a couple of times, but didn't put up a consistently exciting game. He had 10 points in 30 games, so he wasn't hopeless, but Boston doesn't play young prospects that aren't over ready.
He had an injury at the start of last year and then played 57 games in the AHL where he finished as the second highest in points and points per game once you filter out three players who had less than 20 games.
He looked ready to graduate from the AHL, just as his waiver exemption expired, while at the same time, Boston had added new, younger prospects who had hopped over him on their depth chart. The identical situation facing Josh Leivo.
The Bruins saw a small player with good offensive abilities and didn't really have a use for him, not with David Pastrnak, Danton Heinen and Frank Vatrano all in the mix. In trying to move him down to the AHL for another year, they were doing what Toronto hasn't yet tried with Leivo. And they failed.
Future on the Leafs
He won't be waived, we know that much. For the moment we should expect him to sit right beside last year's waiver claim, Frank Corrado, in the press box. Griffith might get a conditioning stint on the Marlies at some point too.
Teams don't even wait anymore before using a conditioning loans for the players they don't want to waive. Columbus sent Scott Harrington to the Monsters on a conditioning loan on the second day of the regular season.
Griffith will have plenty of time to learn the Leafs' systems in practice, and he'll be more than ready when he finally draws into a game unless injuries befall the Leafs early this season. The Leafs are carrying two extra defenders, so he is the only extra forward who can play in case of injury, barring a call-up.
With the Leafs lines stabilizing right out of camp into a predictable arrangement, it seems like his chance at playing time depends on the performance and health of Brown and Mitch Marner.
Griffith may step into Marner's spot on Tyler Bozak's right wing if the team wants to sit out Marner for a few nights. Giving press box big-picture perspective to a rookie is not uncommon. With Griffith on the roster, the chance the Leafs send Marner to the WJC for another year is slightly more probable.
All of that depends on how the various players perform over multiple games, how they do in practice and what injuries befall them. Like Corrado, he'll draw in eventually, but he likely won't be rushed.
Until then, he is mostly an intriguing mystery.
He was famous in this brief NHL stint for two goals. One was an accidental recreation of the famous Bobby Orr diving goal in a three point night:
The other is a between the legs shot:
