Leafs Top 50 Prospects – Cade Webber

The Toronto Maple Leafs organization has drafted and developed a number of youngsters currently playing in the NHL (Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Morgan Rielly, Matthew Knies), but the club under former GM’s Kyle Dubas and Brad Treliving, and new GM John Chayka have had different ideas of what kind of prospects they wanted to populate the organization with. 

As we’ve done on a yearly basis, we will be ranking the club’s top prospects over the upcoming weeks based on their progress in either the NCAA, CHL, Europe, ECHL, or AHL, and their potential to make the Leafs roster and make a contribution in the future.

Players are eligible for the list if they have not played more than 82 NHL games and are 25 years old or younger:

Leafs Prospect List

#50 – Blake Smith – D (Toronto – AHL)

#49 – Henrik Rybinski – F (Hershey – AHL)

#48 – Sawyer Boulton – F (Reading – ECHL, Lehigh Valley – AHL)

#47 – Cole McWard – D (Bridgeport – AHL, NY Islanders – NHL)

#46 – Rylan Fellinger – D (Flint – OHL)

#45 – Sam Stevens – F (Cincinnati – ECHL, Toronto – AHL) 

#44 –  Brody Pepoy – F (Saginaw – OHL)

#43 –   Matt Lahey – D (Michigan State – NCAA)  

#42 –  Yaroslav Fedoseyev – D (Chelyabinsk Clemet – VHL, Chelabinsyk Traktor – KHL)

#41 – Cade Webber – D (Toronto – AHL)

The Leafs under Treliving focused more on adding players of a larger stature to their prospect pool as free agents on AHL contracts, with late-round draft picks, and at the 2024 trade deadline, they went the trade route by acquiring defenseman Cade Webber from the Carolina Hurricanes for a 2026 sixth-round pick.

Webber was a fourth-round pick of the Canes in 2019 and played his youth hockey in Pittsburgh before moving to Massachusetts in 2018 and playing briefly in the US National Development Program and for Team USA in the 2019 Hlinka Gretzky Cup. The 6’7”, 209 lb. blueliner played four seasons at Boston University, playing alongside Calder Trophy winner Lane Hutson in his senior season. He was dealt by the Hurricanes likely because they were not going to be able to sign him to an entry-level contract.

Webber is primarily a defensive defenseman with excellent ability as a shot-blocker and above-average agility in open ice. The 25-year-old had only one goal in 125 NCAA games in four seasons at BU, but with his size and positional awareness, the Leafs are hoping that he will develop into a shutdown defenseman and penalty killer. Webber played 60 games in his first professional season with the Toronto Marlies, with just seven points (1 goal, 6 assists), but continued to show the shot-blocking and positional defensive traits with the Marlies that could result in an NHL opportunity down the line.

 Last season, Webber was burdened by injuries and played just 33 games, with two month-long stints on the injured list and being shut down in early March for the season with an upper-body injury. The reason for his fall in the ratings is twofold. Similar to the smaller Topi Niemela’s fall from favor when Treliving took over, the bigger defensive minded defenseman does not fit the style of play that, purportedly, Chayka wants. The Leafs are going more in the direction of Emil Andrae, the smaller, speedier defenseman with a good first pass.

That does not mean that Webber could eventually make the NHL, but it seems less likely that it will be in Toronto.