2026 Toronto Maple Leafs Prospect Pyramid!

Have fun! Now, a little bit about the Prospect Pyramid.

First of all, What is it? A lot of places do prospect rankings and they take all the prospects in a certain team system and they rank them like 1 through

20 or 1 through 25 or something like that.

That's fine and it's fun content and everything.

I don't love it.

You can rank them all but ultimately your rank within an organization might not matter.

Let's say you're with a team, you're a prospect for that team and you're in that team's AHL system and you're their best prospect in their AHL system.

That doesn't mean you're gonna be the first call up.

First of all there might be a veteran ahead of you that ends up playing instead of you so that you can get bigger minutes in the AHL but also players are gonna be called up based on position.

They're gonna be called up based on need.

If you're a scoring center in the AHL and the NHL team's, I don't know, fourth line left winger who kills penalties goes down that doesn't necessarily mean you're about to get called up.

So much of a prospect's path to the NHL is skill it's hard work but we don't do enough talking about how much of it is luck and circumstance.

It's a tale as old as time.

A guy was rotting down in the minors or he was a healthy scratch, He gets his opportunity, plays really well, keeps playing well, and there you go.

That's the whole rest of the story.

Bobby McMahon was supposed to be a healthy scratch one night, gets in the lineup, scores a hat trick, gets traded to Seattle a couple years later and now he's a multi multi multi millionaire.

Trevor Moore, similar issue.

Mason Marchment, similar issue.

None of whom are Leafs anymore.

But yeah

I understand what I'm saying.

So years ago I came up with the prospect pyramid to sort of be like alright, these guys are in tier 1, these guys are in tier 2, these guys are in tier 3, and so on.

The vast majority of your team's prospects are gonna be in like tier 4 and 5.

Because even if you get drafted, even if you get signed, your odds of playing in the NHL, playing 100 or 200 games in the NHL, it's hard.

It's a really hard league to make and stay in.