Now that we’ve officially shut the door on the month of May, it’s time to go full throttle on NHL Draft content. This content wouldn’t hit the same if the Toronto Maple Leafs were going in without a pick until the third round, like they were supposed to as of a month ago, but now that they’ve got the first overall pick, everybody is invested.

With that out of the way, we’re going to be going country to country and examining the best players from those countries to ever be drafted by the Leafs, kicking off with Canada today. For the purpose of limiting meaningless arguments, we’re not going to rank these players. They’re simply arranged by the era they played in.

Honestly, if we were ranking these players, there’d be a legitimate argument for Sittler to be number one, anyway. He’s second all-time in scoring for the franchise, he hit 40 goals four times and 30 goals eight times, has two 100-point seasons under his belt, and he holds the NHL record for most points in a single game with a six-goal, four-assist, ten-point performance against the Boston Bruins in 1976. Pretty solid career.

If nothing else, Lanny McDonald is the runaway winner for the best Maple Leafs moustache of all time (sorry Wendel Clark and Auston Matthews). In addition to the generational lip duster, he had a pretty solid career on the ice with the Leafs. He didn’t play enough games to get him into the Leafs’ top-1o scoring list, but hit the 40-goal mark three times as a Leaf before getting traded to the Colorado Rockies following a dispute between then-general manager Punch Imlach and captain Darryl Sittler.

Turnbull was the second first round pick from the Maple Leafs in this draft, making for a pretty successful draft performance from their scouts. Turnbull spent eight seasons with the Maple Leafs, hitting the 60-point mark four times including his career-high 79 points in 1976-77. He currently sits fifth all-time on the Maple Leafs’ scoring list by a defenceman, and second in goals by a defenceman, behind only Borje Salming.

Funny, you look at those numbers in 2026 and you’d think whoever owned them had grounds to be put on waivers. But back in the late-1970s, these were good numbers. Palmateer gave the Leafs four years before being traded to the Washington Capitals after a dispute with, you guessed it, Punch Imlach. He spent two seasons with the Capitals before returning to the Leafs for two years. Knee injuries ultimately ended his career early, but he worked as a scout for the Maple Leafs from 2001-2016.

If Lanny McDonald is the owner of best moustache in Maple Leafs history, then Tiger Williams is the owner of the best celebration in history. Of course, I’m referring to the famous ‘ride the stick’ celebration, which technically didn’t happen while he was a Leaf, but it happened against them. Williams doesn’t have the craziest stat sheet from his time in Toronto, but he was a productive player for a few years and helped bring an even more productive player to Toronto when he was traded to the Vancouver Canucks for Rick Vaive. For that and the celebration alone, he deserves to be on this list.

Ah, good ol’ Wendel. He isn’t atop any scoring leaderboards in Toronto, and he never won a Cup with them (like most of their alumni), but you want to talk about a universally agreed-upon fan favourite, Wendel Clark is your guy. A Saskatchewan boy with a full blown moustache on draft day who could score, pass, hit, and fight, Clark exemplified what it means to be a Leaf. So much so that he was somebody they had to part with to bring in Mats Sundin, who would eventually become the Leafs’ all-time leading scorer.

The Toronto Maple Leafs taking a Quebecois prospect like Vincent Damphousse was a bold move at the time (back when everybody believed every French player was headed for Montreal), and while he would end up there eventually, he had a successful Leafs tenure first. His career high in points was 94, back in 1989-90, and he was eventually traded to the Edmonton Oilers for a package including goaltender Grant Fuhr and forward Glenn Anderson, before winning the 1993 Stanley Cup with his hometown Canadiens.

After a loooong stretch without many great Canadian draft picks by the Maple Leafs, we finally get back to the homeland with the selection of Nazem Kadri in 2008. Kadri might not have had any insane offensive seasons for the Maple Leafs, but he was a heart and soul player and, in hindsight, would have been a perfect second-line centre behind Auston Matthews (with all due respect to John Tavares). The trade that sent him to the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for Tyson Barrie and Alex Kerfoot is officially one of the worst in team history.

If you can give Brian Burke credit for anything, he once said that the Leafs believed Morgan Rielly was the best player in the 2012 draft class. He wasn’t, but when you look at who was drafted above him, he was onto something. Unfortunately, the task of being the number-one defenceman for a pressure-packed market like Toronto has been on Rielly’s back for years now, and he’s been under fire as much as he’s been celebrated. Regardless of what you think of him, he’s been a soldier and an excellent ambassador for the community, regardless of what happens with him this offseason.

Had to save the best for last, huh? I won’t spend any time recapping Marner’s Leafs tenure here. If you’ve turned on a TV during the current playoffs at all, you already know about it. Marner’s divorce with the Leafs was messy, but he’s still one of the most productive players they’ve ever drafted. He’s fourth all-time in assists by a Leaf and sixth-all time in points, regardless of what can be said about his playoff performance in Toronto.

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