Toronto Maple Leafs pre-season prospect rankings: 16-20

With training camp opening in just under a month, we will be ranking the Toronto Maple Leafs top 20 prospects starting with 20-16.

It cannot be overstated the impact young players are having on NHL teams and the Toronto Maple Leafs are a perfect example.

When the team finally committed to a proper rebuild it came with the expectation that things were going to get worse before they got better. It also put more of an emphasis on the way the team drafted and developed players in a way that wasn’t a priority in the past.

One of Brendan Shanahan‘s defining moments as president came at the end of the 2015 season when he fired general manager Dave Nonis, interim head coach Peter Horachek, various assistant coaches, scouts, chief pro scout Steve Kasper and director of player development Jim Hughes.

As Kevin McGran of the Toronto Star wrote at the time, the moves came after a lengthy evaluation process by Shanahan.

Kyle Dubas and Mark Hunter were already a part of the organization so Shanahan was already committed to doing things the right way. Now the organization is benefitting from it but knows that they need to continue along that path.

The scouting and development staff has been through a lot changes with the departure of Hunter. James Reeve broke down each hiring and promotion if you want to get a more in-depth look.

Below is the criteria of how the prospect rankings were put together and which players did or didn’t make the cut.

• The cutoff age for the ranking is 23 because at that point, the player has either played professional hockey overseas or with the Toronto Marlies long enough to have more experience than a player who is just starting his professional hockey career.
• The player cannot have more than 25 games of NHL experience like Travis Dermott and Kasperi Kapanen who are expected to graduate to the Leafs fulltime this season.