One ping pong ball tonight decides if the Maple Leafs hand Boston their first round pick
Photo credit: Stephen R. Sylvanie-Imagn Images
Tonight, the fate of the Maple Leafs' first-round pick hangs in the balance, and all it takes is one ping pong ball to determine their fate.
The time has finally come for the Toronto Maple Leafs to figure out whether they are going to keep their 2026 first-round pick or lose it to the Boston Bruins courtesy of the Brandon Carlo fiasco last year.
There's a good chance the pick falls to Boston, but with enough luck and the hockey gods on their side, the Maple Leafs could walk away with a franchise forward or defender and drastically change the outlook of their rebuild/retool.
The Maple Leafs sit fifth and one team jumping above them sends their pick to Boston under the Carlo trade condition
But right now their only hope is that the New Jersey Devils somehow pull some magic out of a hat and get the second overall pick, pushing Toronto into a chance to get the third. It's a lot of what if's, and they actually risk out on losing the pick by virtue of teams simply just getting luckier.
It's actually more likely the team ends up with the sixth or seventh overall pick, which would push it to the Bruins and make the Carlo deal an unmitigated disaster.
Losing a potential franchise player on top of Fraser Minten is a trade that can only be described as a failure, and Brad Treliving deserved his pink slip for it.
Seattle, Winnipeg, Florida, San Jose, Nashville and St. Louis could all leapfrog the Maple Leafs and make sure that the Bruins walk away with their pick. Couple that with the fact they traded their own 2027 pick to Philadelphia and have a likely late first-rounder thanks to the Nic Roy deal; it's not a great position to be in.
As we've seen with the Islanders last year, all it takes are the balls to drop in your favour and suddenly you have hope. Toronto needs to get extremely lucky if they want to start things off on the right foot.
Losing the pick to Boston tonight would be the worst possible start to the Chayka era but keeping it creates its own complicated problem
If Boston ends up with the pick, then that's bad. If Toronto ends up with it, that's good — with a caveat.
The problem now becomes who Toronto is going to target. Gavin McKenna is likely going first overall, and then it might be a crapshoot afterwards. Ivar Stenberg is the presumed #2 but the Canucks could switch gears and nab him first overall.
It all depends on who drafts who. If we see an off the board pick within the first three picks, then Toronto can feel more comfortable drafting Keaton Verhoeff or Chase Reid if they are both still on the board, but then there's also Caleb Malhotra.
Malhotra's stocked raised considerably recently, and with the potential to bring in his father as a head coach; they could forgo the blueline and nab him. It's not necessarily that there are bad picks, but it's legitimately one chance to get it right.
If Mark Leach; the man running things tonight, is not on his game then it may cost the Maple Leafs their future and make things even harder for Chayka.
But it all depends on if they even keep their pick in the first place, and that's nowhere near a guarantee.
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19 of 20 NHL insiders called the Chayka hire a sham and Keith Pelley’s response was seven words
19 of 20 NHL insiders called the Chayka hire a sham and Keith Pelley’s response was seven words
Previously on Hockey Patrol