Your TML Rebuild Plan

[Kin]

I enjoy how even when you don't disagree with someone you can find some semantics to quibble over (whatever Rielly is, it's a pretty good "bust" to have).

To be clear, I do disagree re: Rielly. I was just moving past it because I didn't want to get bogged down in "Where do we see Morgan Rielly in 5 years?".

Also, semantics is typically about the meaning of words. Saying a rating system is misleading or overly simplistic isn't really a semantic discussion. What I just wrote, however, is.

But 1-3 are key parts of the rebuild, I think, and, with them going as they have, the Leafs might not be a playoff team yet without 4 & 5, but they'd be looking a lot better than any of us expected.

Sure. I don't think we can overstate the importance to a rebuild of winning a lottery and drafting someone like Matthews. Not just because of how good he is but because of the ripple effects it would have on the roster. 

Sure. That could happen. I wondered back around draft time what the history was on guys who fell out of the top three/five over the course of their draft year. How many are Espositos? How many are Nylanders? How many are somewhere in between?

To be fair, I think there's less "could" and more "did" there. That's not to say that Liljegren can't still develop into a really good player, he can. But that's true of anyone drafted in the first round, one time projected top 5 pick or not.

Which is to say that if you'd told me that the Leafs would make the playoffs but they'd still draft Liljegren with their pick I'd probably wonder why he was available as opposed to chalking it up to divine favour.

 

[disco]

Nick just made a good point just now on Hockey Central about how much the Leafs spend outside the cap now on things like scouting, sports-sciences, farm-team, coaching... etc. Speculating it's tops in the League and good on them. For sure, when you're as rich as MLSE it seems reasonable that all you divisions are well funded, but it's not a guarantee.