The Toronto Maple Leafs will make their second and final trip to TD Garden this season Tuesday night to play the rival Boston Bruins.
These teams are headed in opposite directions as the regular season winds down, and few experts, if any, could have predicted the current state of both franchises before the 2025-26 campaign began.
The Maple Leafs were widely expected to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs for a ninth consecutive season. The Bruins were expected to miss the postseason for the second straight year. Fast forward 70 or so games and it’s actually the Bruins in the thick of the playoff race while the Leafs are headed for no playoff hockey this spring.
If that wasn’t bad enough for the Leafs, they might also have to send their 2026 first-round draft pick to the Bruins. The pick, which is top-five protected in 2026, was sent to Boston along with a 2026 fourth-rounder and young center Fraser Minten in exchange for defenseman Brandon Carlo just prior to last year’s trade deadline.
Right now — and things could certainly change before the end of the season — the Bruins have a decent chance of getting this pick from the Maple Leafs.
Toronto enters Tuesday’s game in Boston with the sixth-worst points percentage in the league standings.
If the Leafs finish the regular season with the sixth-worst record, they’d have the following odds (via Tankathon) at landing a top-five pick and keeping it in 2026.
No. 1 overall: 7.5 percent
No. 2: 7.7 percent
No. 3: 0.2 percent
No. 4 and No. 5: N/A
Even if the Leafs finish outside of the five worst records, they could still get lucky in the draft lottery and keep their first-rounder.
But at the moment, the Bruins should feel good about potentially adding a lottery pick to their impressive stash of draft selections over the next couple years.
The 2026 draft is expected to be a strong one, and a top-10 pick could potentially add another elite talent to Boston’s prospect pool.
Meanwhile, the Leafs’ playoff appearance streak will soon end and there isn’t much in the pipeline in terms of high-quality prospects for Toronto. They might need a stroke of luck at the draft lottery to avoid disaster and prevent one of their biggest rivals from improving in a major way.