Maple Leafs Select Joseph Woll 62nd Overall

With the 62nd overall pick and the first pick of the third round, the Toronto Maple Leafs selected 6″3′ American goalie Joseph Woll out of the United States Development Program.

Here’s Future Considerations on Woll’s game:

Here are Woll’s boxcar stats:

Basically what the Leafs are getting in Woll is a big, athletic goaltender with good numbers and NHL starter potential. He was also the consensus 74th best player in this draft, which means the Leafs are getting fair value.

I’ve actually saw a bit of Woll at the U18s this April and I came away impressed. I had him as my fifth-rated goalie behind Carter Hart, Zachary Sawchenko, Tyler Parsons, and Evan Fitzpatrick (three of whom were already off the board). I basically saw what Future Considerations saw: a big, athletic goalie with fundamentals that are polished enough that he has legitimate starting goalie upside.

So, you should feel good about this pick. Obviously given the basic randomness that is the NHL draft, Woll is unlikely to turn into much of anything. That said, in relative terms, Woll represents a pick of fair value here.

I think it was smart for the Leafs to wait on a goalie and not take one in the first couple of rounds, because you can get good goalies past that point as well. But they waited until, well, virtually the earliest spot in which you could possibly draft a goalie outside of the first two rounds.

I wonder just how high the Leafs are on Woll and whether they would’ve preferred another goalie, say Hart or Swedish netminder Filip Gustavsson. I also wonder if they felt, given the fact that four goalies were drafted in the second round, they needed to take one now to make sure they got their hands on something.

In any event, Woll immediately becomes the best goalie in the Leafs prospect system given the fact that unlike Sparks, Bibeau, and Kaskisuo, he has NHL starter potential.

He’s committed to Boston College for the 2016-2017 hockey season.