{"id":554289,"date":"2026-04-17T05:01:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T05:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/554289\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T05:01:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T05:01:46","slug":"the-nightmare-maple-leafs-draft-pick-scenario-with-bruins-no-one-is-talking-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/554289\/","title":{"rendered":"The nightmare Maple Leafs draft pick scenario with Bruins no one is talking about"},"content":{"rendered":"

The nightmare Maple Leafs draft pick scenario with Bruins no one is talking about<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It’s been easy to focus on the Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a>‘ first-round pick in the 2026 NHL Draft that is top-five protected.<\/p>\n

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If it falls outside the first five picks, it goes to the Boston Bruins<\/a> as part of last year’s Brandon Carlo<\/a> trade.<\/p>\n

Except wait a second — if it ends up in the top-five, which has about a 44% chance in the lottery — the Bruins still get a pick. It’s just not this year.<\/p>\n

And that’s something no one has really talked about.<\/p>\n

The Maple Leafs, if they keep their pick in 2026, convey an unprotected 2027 first-rounder to Boston.<\/p>\n

The hope, of course, is that it’ll be later in the first round after Toronto has a bounceback season.<\/p>\n

But what about the nightmare season where they don’t?<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Maple Leafs’ president brought AI trade pitches to deadline meetings<\/a><\/p>\n

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They might not want to enter into a rebuild, even if it gets ugly, because next year’s first-rounder would then be going to Boston no matter what.<\/p>\n

There’s at least a case that losing their pick this year isn’t the absolute worst-case scenario.<\/p>\n

The absolute worst-case outcome is keeping the pick this year, being even worse next year and giving Boston a pick in the top couple spots of the draft.<\/p>\n

Is that likely? Not really. The Maple Leafs have too much talent to be that bad… right?<\/p>\n

Well, this season showed maybe anything is possible.<\/p>\n

It’s just something to keep in mind.<\/p>\n

More NHL news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The nightmare Maple Leafs draft pick scenario with Bruins no one is talking about originally appeared on The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5106],"tags":[95,1529,5,20,5172,4,66,31,5171],"class_list":{"0":"post-554289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-maple-leafs","8":"tag-boston-bruins","9":"tag-brandon-carlo","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-maple-leafs","12":"tag-mapleleafs","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-toronto","15":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","16":"tag-torontomapleleafs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116418295866864343","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}