Well, the trade deadline was a dud, which was exactly what so many fans expected. The Leafs managed to unload Nicholas Roy, Scott Laughton and Bobby McMann, which returned 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th round picks, collectively. The 1st and 2nd round selections are for the 2027 NHL Entry Draft, which means they still don’t have a selection until round 3 this spring. It’s said that this draft is a deep pool, which makes this a bit of an added failure to me.
It’s also my belief that the Leafs targeted the 2027 draft on purpose. Brad Treliving is lucky to still have a job considering the team he has put together and Craig Berube has lost the room, by all accounts. There’s no guarantee that either of them are back next season, but if they are I think Treliving will opt to trade those picks this summer to try to turn the team around quickly. He is in “job saving mode” at the moment, which can quickly lead to mistakes being made. My only hope is that Keith Pelley fires him before he does further damage to the organization.
So, besides the firing of one of the worst GM/Head Coach duo’s this team has had in decades, what are we cheering for now?
The question on everybody’s mind is what happens to the 1st round pick that they traded to the Boston Bruins for Brandon Carlo at last years trade deadline. That pick has top 5 protection, which means that if the Leafs end up picking in the top 5 they’ll move their 2027 pick to Boston instead. They also traded their 2027 pick to the Philadelphia Flyers (top 10 protected) in the Scott Laughton trade. That pick would slide to 2028 in this scenario.
Getting their selection into the top 5 won’t be easy. At the moment they would have the 9th overall selection if we go by points, but if we base it on points percentage it would be the 7th selection. Falling behind two more teams doesn’t sound all that hard on paper, but when you consider that both the Calgary Flames and St. Louis Blues (tied for 28th in the NHL, aka, draft pick numbers 4 and 5) have 57pts each, which is 8pts less than Toronto and they sold more at the deadline than the Leafs, it starts to look very unlikely that they can get there.
On the flip side, it is possible that they can jump over a few teams ahead of them in the standings. They haven’t won a game since they returned from the Olympic break, going 0-3-2 so far, but if they could get off the schneid and start stringing some wins together they may keep the Bruins out of the top 10 in the draft. At the moment that may be the best case scenario from a mathematical point of view.
Here are the lottery odds for each team, based on NHL standings.
NHL Rank/Lottery Odds
32nd – 18.5%
31st – 13.5%
30th – 11.5%
29th – 9.5%
28th – 8.5%
27th – 7.5%
26th – 6.5%
25th – 6%
24th – 5%
23rd – 3.5%
22nd – 3%
21st – 2.5%
20th – 2%
19th – 1.5%
18th – 0.5%
17th – 0.5%
There are a couple of things to note. First, no team can jump up more than 10 spots in the draft, which means that if the team with the 12th overall selection based on the end of season standings wins the lottery, the highest they can pick is 2nd overall. 13th can move to 3rd and 14th to 4th etc. Also, there are two draws. The winner of the 1st draw would pick 1st overall, if they are eligible to move into that position, while the winner of the 2nd draw would pick 2nd overall.
As for the Leafs, who would have the 7th best odds off winning the lottery if the season ended today, they would have a 6.5% chance at selecting 1st overall, while their odds would be slightly raised for the second draw.
Lastly, here is how the odds are determined and the lottery works. There are 14 numbered ping pong balls placed in a lottery machine, which makes for 1,001 different possible combinations. One combination is randomly deleted, while the remaining 1,000 are randomly assigned to the 16 teams that don’t make the playoffs. The last place team gets 185 combinations, which gives them their 18.5% winning percentage. The Leafs would have 65 possible combinations, or a 6.5% chance at winning.
This really just shows what a terrible situation they’re in at the moment. Not only would they have to fall into the top 5 in order to keep their pick, but they’d then have to stay there. What this means is if they ended the season with the 5th overall pick, there is still a 38% chance that a team behind them in the standings would win the lottery, which would then push their pick back to the 6th position and into the hands of the Boston Bruins. If they were in 4th it would help their chances at remaining in the top 5, but they would still be at risk of two teams behind them winning and, again, being pushed back into the 6th position. The only sure fire way to stay in the top 5th would be to end the year as one of the three worst teams in the league.
If you’re part of Tank Nation, you have a lot riding on the performance of far too many teams down the stretch.
So, once again, what should we cheer for? My answer to that would be to cheer for your team to win, but hope that they win just enough to give the Bruins a terrible pick, but not enough to convince upper management to keep Brad Treliving and Craig Berube on for next season. Based on the chances of them first being able to fall into the top 5 of the draft, while also having to stay there, this seems to be the best course of action from here. Once the season ends, we can then hope that they win the lottery from one of the 10-15 spots in the draft and keep their pick that way.