Maple Leafs Nation Prospect Rankings Start Now(ish)

It’s that magical time of the year again when the blogging world takes to projecting who the best prospects in hockey are. Why should this site be any different? We’re full of opinions. Some of us even watch leagues that aren’t the NHL. And some of us who don’t watch, are decent with numbers. What you’re left with is a top twenty list of players that we either like because they seem to have the potential to be great or the potential to be ready for the NHL fairly soon. 

The Leafs Nation list relies on Calder Trophy eligibility as the definition for prospect. It’s easily understood, but still open for debate. I’m sure most people would consider Kasperi Kapanen and Andreas Borgman to be more valuable as organizational prospects than Trevor Moore or Jordan Subban, but for the purpose of this list you won’t be getting any Kapanen, Dermott, Borgman, Sparks or Leivo content. We’ll consider Dermott and Borgman graduates from last year’s list, which was as follows: 

Also gone from last year is Justin Holl who aged himself out of Calder eligibilty, and Miro Aaltonen, who the Leafs still retain the NHL rights for, but has opted to return to Europe. 

So at the bare minimum there will be four new names on this year’s list. If you are putting money on this (as one does) I’d assume that there could be change beyond that.

Anyways, tomorrow we’ll be back with the list of prospects who didn’t receive a vote from our panel and Friday will feature our honourable mentions. After we’ve wrapped up our long shots, we’ll start on to our twenty favourites on Monday and let that run until right up before the rookie tournament. 

Excitement! Prospects! Blogging! I can barely contain myself. Let us know your top 20 in the comments below.