Drafting a goalie would make sense if your organization was a finely tuned draft and development machine and some years you had an extra high pick to get it done.
Problem with Toronto is we've gone down the old mortgage the future route through big ticket acquisitions, contract dumping and ill fated rentals over the past five years which has emptied out a huge number of picks and prospects who could be used to fill roster spots and now we see gaps in draft classes beginning to pop up.
Circumstances have not helped the progression of guys like Sandin, Liljegren and Robertson, and behind Amirov it feels like the more recent draft classes are stocked with players who have no obvious use in rolse to support the core group.
Trading away picks, while not amazing, had a lot less to do with it than the fact that Hunter netted us practically nothing out of the 2015-2017 drafts outside of Marner, Dermott, Liljegren, and Matthews (and I guess Grundstrom since he was moved for Muzzin). That was despite having 27 picks in that 3 year span (14 of which were within the top 95 picks of the drafts). Most of the other picks have flat out busted by now, with Woll, Scott, and Brooks being the only ones with any sort of reasonable promise remaining (+ Korshkov and Timashov if you count guys who are now out of organization).
4/27 is inexcusable, especially when 2 of those 4 were top 5 no-brainer picks and the lowest of the entire bunch was a 34th overall pick in a stacked draft. Even 7/27, which is what we get if all of Scott, Woll, and Brooks to turn out, is subpar. The only saving grace has been adding a bunch of free wallets like Holl, Zaitsev, Mikheyev, Moore, etc. over the years to make up for it.
Compare that to the past few years where Robertson, Sandin, SDA, Durzi, Hollowell, Kral, Abramov, and Holmberg have already made it further than most of the prospects we've drafted in 2015-2017, and we've got a number of others who look extremely promising (Kokkonen, Abruzzese, Koster, Niemela, Hirvonen, Miettinen, Villeneuve, etc.). We don't know if they make the NHL yet, but at least they are making it to the AHL. Out of the 27 picks we've had, only half (14) were even good enough to earn an ELC. 8/15 in 2018 and 2019 already have an ELC, and that excludes Abruzzese, Kokkonen, and Koster. Outside of Stotts in the 3rd round, it is looking like the guys who are not progressing amazingly well are the 7th round picks (Loponen, Kizimov, and Bouthillier). It's too early for most of the 2020 guys at this point, especially since many of them are NCAA bound.
To conclude: Number of picks is important, but it doesn't matter if you are busting on the majority of them anyways. Having only 3 picks in 2021 is not great, but I guess Dubas and Co. are not comfortable with the crop and that makes it the best time to have 3 picks (if there is a best time).
