Interesting since Mark Hunter gets dumped on for his awful drafting such as the 2016 draft besides Matthews, specifically Korshakov pick with the first pick in the second round. Why does Dubas get to escape the bad draft picks while Hunter was here however Marner is Dubas pick (Hunter being co owner and GM of the London Knights where Marner played junior hockey). Some of you Dubas fan boys are so twisted it really broadlines on cult like behavior.
I'll clear everything up. The 2015 draft was done by committee.
Hunter wanted Marner. Babcock wanted Hanifin.
Dubas wanted to move down in the draft. Here's video evidence:
- It's at the 40 second mark of the video.
CBJ gets a call from Toronto on the phone. They briefly discuss a trade and Jarmo turns it down.
The offer was if Arizona doesn't pick Hanifin - they picked Dylan Strome, Toronto would trade the 4th pick to Columbus in exchange for their 8th overall pick and all their seconds (they had two). Jarmo says he'd do it but he believed that Werenski was close enough in quality to Hanifin that it wasn't worth the exchange. The risk of course was that somebody else could have snagged Werenski before hand.
Trading down in the draft is a classic Dubas move, he's done it in almost every draft he's run. Instead he traded down from 24th (Konecny) later on in that draft.
As for who he wanted to pick at 8: I've heard he was high on Rantanen, Provorov who went 7th and Werenski.
If we picked Werenski 8th, we probably pick Aho instead of Dermott with our 2nd rounder as the team was split on them, this is something Babcock confirmed himself. The likely reason for Dermott over Aho is that the Leafs literally had zero defensive prospects at the time, not even low end ones.
My own theory here the alternate universe looks like this:
Leafs draft Werenski at 8.
They don't need trade down at 24 as they already have 3 second rounders from their initial trade. Konecny is the most likely outcome as they were light on forward prospects at the time too - Nylander was the only high end prospect in the system.
It's still a toss up who they pick between Aho and Dermott in the second round. I think having Werenski would make them lean more towards another forward in Aho.
So now the core looks like this: Nylander, Werenski, Konecny, Aho
Add Matthews to that the following season. Very different team. A bit more well balanced team for the Babcock years but it's not as explosive of an offense without Marner.
