Every year at the NHL development camps, teams invite undrafted players to come to their prospect development camps. It’s a great opportunity for the players to gain some development from the best staff available, and a chance for an in-depth scouting session with players who could fill the lower ranks of a team’s prospect pool.

Some names that have stood out in the last couple development camps were Michael Joly, Nikolas Brouillard, Tyler Wong and Trevor Moore. Brouillard and Moore stuck around in the Toronto system, signing AHL deals with the Marlies. Wong has been dominating the WHL, and Joly has had limited success playing in the Blackhawks farm system. Time will tell of course, but all still have a lot of progress to make to grasp a future depth role in the NHL.

Yesterday, the Leafs made this announcement detailing the players who would be attending their 2017 development camp. Below are some names that may be worth paying attention to:

Auston Keating – Near point per game center for Ottawa 67s. in his draft year. Keating was ranked 61st of the top 100 draft eligible prospects by the hard-working folks over at CanucksArmy.

Corey Andonovski – Teammate of Ryan O’Connell, Leafs 2016 7th round draft choice, at the very reputable St. Andrew’s College program.  3rd highest scorer of the collective Canadian high school programs. He had 74 points in 57 games, compared to O’Connell’s 33 in 47.

Kyle Maksomovich – Playing in the dominant Erie Otters program, he had a point per game in his draft year, but went undrafted, likely due to his 5’9″ frame. He showed no progression into draft+1, but is still playing at a point per game pace.

Jacob Tortora – Any player that makes it into the exclusive USNTDP program is someone to watch. Tortora has ~0.6 points per game for them, he’s 5’8″, and he has a late birthday.

Joseph Garreffa – A small winger out of Kitchener, scoring nearly a point per game in this his draft year, 60 poitns in 68 games. Another late birthday.

Glenn Gustafsson – He is the brother of Blackhawks D-man Erik Gustafsson. 18 years old playing in the SHL, he managed to meet the 51% rule (explained here). Thick bodied, at 5’10” 203 pounds.

Taro Hirose – 21 years old, but had similar NCAA production to what Jimmy Vesey was able to do at the same age. He managed to score 24 points in 34 games (Vesey had 22 in 31 in his 21 year old season)

Linus Nyman – ~0.8 point per game LW, 5’10”, for Kingston, in his first year in the OHL. Once again, he is a late birthday. Nyman was ranked #95 out of 100 2017 draft eligible prospects by CanucksArmy.

Vladislav Yeryomenko – Belarussian D-man for the Calgary Hitmen, scored 0.4 points per game in his first WHL season. He stands 6’0″ tall but is again fairly thin, weighing 176 lbs.

Keating is definitely the biggest name to watch here, having really strong indications that he should have been drafted in the 2017 NHL Entry draft, the Leafs may have found themselves a free wallet prospect. Definitely don’t count the rest of the names out, but remember that in these development camps, they are playing against other development camp players, so the quality of competition (which is a huge factor in such a small sample) is going to be low enough to skew most of these higher-rung players to look better than they are.

The development camp kicks off July 7th at the Mastercard Center in Toronto.