doing the trading down exercise, I saw this on another website.
Trade the 1st overall pick in previous drafts for 3rd OA plus a late 1st and prospect. etc.
go back and see how it would turn out.spoiler, keeping #1 and taking the best player is the best option for pretty much the last 15 drafts.
clear exceptions are. ignoring all the drafts a D was taken #1, the Leafs biggest “need” by most accounts a dman2020 Jake Sanderson vs Lafreniere
2017 Heiskanen / Makar vs Hischier2023 Just some example, would you rather have Bedard or say, first D picked…Reinbacher and E Cowan plus another depth prospect?
2019 Jack Hughes or Bowen Byram plus Connor McMichael plus another depth prospect
Wrong again. There are plenty of 1st overall busts and plenty of recent examples where the best player from the draft was not 1st overall.
2010: Hall vs Seguin. Seguin won.
2011: Nugent-Hopkins vs. Landeskog. Landeskog won.
2012: Yakupov vs Everybody else. Yakupov sucked.
2013: MacKinnon vs Barkov. MacKinnon has scored more points and goals but Barkov has more Cups (way better two-way player too).
2014: Ekblad vs. Reinhart. They won Cups together eventually. #3 Draisaitl way more goals and points than both. Florida with the #1, #2 and #4 (Bennett) pick. Leafs should do the same.
2015: McDavid vs. Eichel. Best player in the world is McDavid, no doubt, but Eichel has the Cup and chasing a 2nd this year.
2016: Matthews vs. Laine. Matthews has the best regular season stats but Tkachuk went 6th and he’s got a Cup.
2017: Hischier vs Patrick. Makar went 4th. Clearly the best player from the draft. Heiskanen went 3rd.
2018: Dahlin vs Svechnikov. Quinn Hughes went 7th.
2019: J. Hughes. Seider has been better at 6th overall. Caufield was 15th overall and has more goals. Boldy was 12th overall and comparable.
2020: Lafreniere. Stutzle (3rd), Raymond (4th) and Jarvis (13th) have all been better players.
If the Leafs scouting department is good at what they do, they could easily trade down and get the better combination of players by trading down.
The only way the argument for “keep 1st overall” is if the draft yielded an actual generational talent like McDavid. McKenna is not McDavid. He has serious flaws in his game. Flaws that this franchise has dealt with and failed with in the past. The Leafs would be retarded to repeat the same mistakes again expecting different results.