{"id":554559,"date":"2026-04-17T13:39:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T13:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/554559\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T13:39:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T13:39:35","slug":"maple-leafs-criticized-for-failure-to-fully-draft-pick-tank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/554559\/","title":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs criticized for failure to fully draft pick tank"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s one of the most difficult things to figure out in sports.<\/p>\n<p>When teams are out of the playoffs, and their only real incentive is to tank for draft picks, how do they do that best? The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/ca\/nhl\/toronto-maple-leafs\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> were in that spot this season.<\/p>\n<p>They ended up with the fifth-best NHL Draft lottery odds, but that leaves about a 56% chance of them conveying their top-five protected first-round pick to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/ca\/nhl\/boston-bruins\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Boston Bruins<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Just a couple points difference would&#8217;ve had the Leafs in a bottom-three spot that would&#8217;ve guaranteed they keep their pick.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">So one less point and the Leafs would&#8217;ve finished third last based on tiebreakers and guaranteed to keep their pick. How they did not prioritize that with even the slightest effort could be a misstep that haunts them for years. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/biLd7CosSI\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/biLd7CosSI<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Michael Amato (@amato_mike) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/amato_mike\/status\/2044986245047112078?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">April 17, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/ca\/nhl\/buffalo-sabres\/news\/sabres-playoff-ticket-prices-cost-most-nhl\/abec1fee7f3924aad07fa727\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Sabres&#8217; playoff ticket costs are mind-blowing<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sure, it&#8217;s a very easy thing to publicly criticize.<\/p>\n<p>But man, how is that supposed to work? The players on the ice are professionals &#8212; they aren&#8217;t going to try to lose.<\/p>\n<p>The Leafs traded guys away at the deadline. They shut others down with injury.<\/p>\n<p>At some point, you&#8217;ve got to put players on the ice, and sometimes they win games.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Especially near the end of a season like this one, it can be journeymen or young players on the ice. Their personal incentive is to prove they belong, not help the Leafs get a better draft pick that may replace them anyway.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;ll never be a perfect answer to this conundrum. For the Maple Leafs, it ended up being right in a tricky area that will leave lottery night holding a lot of suspense.<\/p>\n<p>More NHL news:<\/p>\n<p>                            <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s one of the most difficult things to figure out in sports. When teams are out of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5106],"tags":[5,20,5172,4,66,31,5171],"class_list":{"0":"post-554559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-maple-leafs","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-maple-leafs","10":"tag-mapleleafs","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-toronto","13":"tag-toronto-maple-leafs","14":"tag-torontomapleleafs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116420330329272528","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554559","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=554559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}