Former Toronto Maple Leaf Colaiacovo: Organizational fail for the Maple Leafs

It's been a rollercoaster ride for Leafs Nation in recent years, and for one former Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman; their drafting strategy is a huge reason why.

Speaking with TSN's 1050 First Up, Colaiacovo candidly discussed the reason he believes the Maple Leafs have gotten such a negative reputation from their fanbase, and their inability to have some foresight in building a complete team should not be overlooked.

"When you put yourself in a position to build a salary structure with your team where you're going to build around four forwards, and it is going to occupy a large percentage of your cap, almost half of your cap, how the heck, organizationally, you did not decide to draft and develop more stud defensemen is beyond me.»

He's not wrong. In the last several drafts, the Maple Leafs drafted a bevy of potential star forwards like Easton Cowan and Fraser Minten, however their track record of defenseman is shoddy at best. In the years since the Maple Leafs drafted their true last star defenseman in Morgan Reilly, pretty much every D-man taken has been a disaster.

First, the only players to have established themselves in the NHL are Travis Dermott (351 games), Rasmus Sandin (233 games) and Sean Durzi (225 games) but those numbers were inflated heavily by playing with other teams. Other names such as Viktor Loov, Rinat Valiev, Keaton Middleton, and Filip Kral have a combined 21 NHL games and showed zero signs of earning a spot in Toronto. It has been a revolving door of defenseman since drafting Reilly and the lack of attention to building a more steady defense corps has bit the Maple Leafs more than they had hoped.

«It's like, draft and develop big, stud defensemen. At this point here, you'd probably have guys in their third or fourth years as an absolute stud on your bluelines. Instead, now they get a �D+' for trading because, yeah, every year they're trying to trade for defensemen, give up draft picks, and patchwork that defense to sort of give them a chance to win, instead of drafting and developing these guys and leaving them to your system for six, seven years. That's been the organizational failure for this Maple Leafs team.»

If there is any indication that the Maple Leafs have learned from their mistakes, it's having a slowly growing prospect pool of defenseman; but let's just hope that they don't blow it all up for the sake of another hopeful flash in the pan.

Previously on MapleLeafsLatest

Former Leafs defenseman offers strategy to Craig Berube's staff

Maple Leafs Ryan Reaves likely on the chopping block

Odds have Toronto Maple Leafs near favourites to win Atlantic Division

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10 AOUT \| 66 ANSWERS Former Toronto Maple Leaf Colaiacovo: "Organizational fail for the Maple Leafs" Has the Maple Leafs drafting defenseman been a disaster since Morgan Reilly?
Yes	46	69.7 %
No	6	9.1 %
Had Potential	12	18.2 %
Biggest What If?	2	3 %
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