The Toronto Maple Leafs have not developed a non-high-end draft pick into a star player since Tomas Kaberle, who was one of the best defenseman of his generation.
While other teams hit on superstars seemingly at will, the Toronto Maple Leafs struggle to develop young talent.
the summer, every team has hope that next year will be better, and prices for trades can be expensive. At the trade deadline, teams are just happy to get what they can. A smart team would hoard their cap space and assets to use when star players can almost always be found at a discount.
And if you are counting on doing that, then you probably won’t do much in the summer, which will lead to a chance to audition players.
Success is often all about opportunity. How many NHL players’ careers where made because they got a lucky goal in their first shift and then were given another chance? Or how many players careers took off just because they were on a team that didn’t have a top defenseman or had room to audition guys on the power-play?
Everyone with even a chance to play in the NHL is one of the best hockey players in the world. Expansion teams find stars because sometimes all a player who is already one of the best in the world at what they do gets an opportunity, such as William Karlsson or Shea Theodore in Las Vegas, or Vince Dunn in Seattle, they run with it.
If the Leafs don’t choose to overload in free agency and sign players whose salary ensures they get a roster spot automatically, they could let Timo Niemela play in the top four in October. They could try Nick Robertson on the first line.
It might not work out, but it might just turn out that they find a superstar they didn’t know about. The Leafs current roster is basically a sure thing to make the playoffs, so their summer plan should be to maintain a ton of flexibility so that they can audition their prospects from October to February. Then, when the Trade Deadline rolls around, they can strike at the best time to add cheap stars.
Now, I can’t speak to the distant past, but while the current team is on the verge of developing several good players, I think it’s safe to say that this has not been a strength over the course of the Shanahan Era.
The Leafs have been a contender for a long time now, and when you’re a contender you usually have the luxury of forcing your young players to earn their way into big minutes. This is a solid system, but it’s not ever going to find you a lot of surprises – those tend to occur on bad teams.
Contending teams aren’t going to start handing out jobs to undeserving players any time soon, and I’m not saying they should. But expansion teams always find at least one superstar no one knew about and bad teams forced to experiment also occasionally find gems competitive teams do not.
