{"id":568236,"date":"2026-05-06T11:36:16","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T11:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/568236\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T11:36:16","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T11:36:16","slug":"maple-leafs-history-with-no-1-overall-pick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/568236\/","title":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs history with No. 1 overall pick"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maple Leafs history with No. 1 overall pick<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Toronto Maple Leafs<\/a> have been here before, although not all that often.<\/p>\n

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The Leafs won the NHL Draft lottery on Tuesday night to earn the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft. It’ll be the third time they have the first pick in the draft.<\/p>\n

Both of the first two instances worked out quite nicely, so the Leafs will be hoping that’s the case again.<\/p>\n

The expectation is that Gavin McKenna will be the favorite for that slot, but the pre-draft process could always shift that by the time the Maple Leafs are officially on the clock.<\/p>\n

This is a quick look at how that slot has worked out for them before.<\/p>\n

MORE:\u00a0Sabres’ storybook season is real, and Stanley Cup dreams are valid<\/a><\/p>\n

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Maple Leafs history with No. 1 overall pick<\/p>\n

The Maple Leafs have had the first overall pick twice before.<\/p>\n

The first time was in 1985, when they took the winger Wendel Clark from the WHL’s Saskatoon Blades.<\/p>\n

Clark went on to play 13 of his 15 NHL seasons for the Maple Leafs.<\/p>\n

He scored 260 of his 330 goals and had 181 of his 234 assists with the Leafs while also spending short stints with Tampa Bay, Quebec, Chicago<\/a>, Detroit<\/a> and the Islanders.<\/p>\n

Then in 2016, they took the American center Auston Matthews<\/a> with the first overall pick.<\/p>\n

Matthews remains with Toronto, 10 seasons into his NHL career. He has scored 428 goals and dished out 352 assists (780 points) in 689 games with the Maple Leafs.<\/p>\n

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Now, assuming that the Leafs don’t move Matthews this summer, he’ll get a chance to play with the franchise’s next top pick and try to turn things around from a rough 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n

More NHL news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maple Leafs history with No. 1 overall pick originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5106],"tags":[532,37,599,5,20,5172,4,591,12894,66,31,5171,4218],"class_list":["post-568236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto-maple-leafs","tag-auston-matthews","tag-chicago","tag-detroit","tag-hockey","tag-maple-leafs","tag-mapleleafs","tag-nhl","tag-nhl-draft-lottery","tag-saskatoon-blades","tag-toronto","tag-toronto-maple-leafs","tag-torontomapleleafs","tag-wendel-clark"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116527430589029161","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568236","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=568236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}