Brody Pepoy: The Maple Leafs' Sixth-Round Bet on a Late Bloomer

Brody Pepoy is the Maple Leafs pick nobody had on a list

Brody Pepoy went 169th overall to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the 2026 NHL Draft, in the sixth round, out of the Saginaw Spirit of the OHL. Eighteen months before that, he was not a drafted major junior player at all. He was a training-camp invite from Troy, Michigan who talked his way onto an OHL roster and then made the coaching staff keep him.

That is the entire case for Brody Pepoy, and it is a better one than most sixth-round cases. The Maple Leafs selected 10 players at the 2026 draft, and Pepoy was among the last of them. Late-round picks are lottery tickets by definition. The useful question is not whether he will play in the NHL — the base rate says he probably will not — but whether the reasoning behind the pick was sound. Here, it was.

Undrafted into the OHL, then a training-camp invite

Pepoy was passed over entirely in the OHL Priority Selection. He spent his 2024-25 season with the Pittsburgh Penguins Elite 16U program, where he put up 22 goals and 30 assists for 52 points in 55 games — just shy of a point per game against age-group competition, and not the kind of production that gets a player onto NHL draft boards.

Saginaw brought him in as a free-agent camp invite in the summer of 2025 and signed him to an OHL Standard Player Agreement after he impressed the staff. Players who arrive that way usually spend a season on the fourth line and disappear. Pepoy did not.

Why the path matters to scouts

Development curves are not linear, and a player who was overlooked at 15 and productive at 17 is showing something different from a player who was highly ranked at 15 and merely fine at 17. The first is trending up. Toronto's amateur staff, substantially reworked under John Chayka this summer, appears to have leaned into that distinction with several of its late 2026 selections.

The rookie OHL season: 29 points and a motor

Pepoy's one season with Saginaw produced 16 goals and 13 assists for 29 points in 67 games, at 0.43 points per game, with 22 penalty minutes. Listed between 6-foot-1 and 6-foot-2 at roughly 181 pounds, he plays right wing and shoots right.

The scouting consensus is consistent across sources: a big power forward who plays a pacey, high-energy game built on grit and a genuinely relentless motor. He forechecks hard, he combines speed with physicality, and he is described as a difficult opponent to play against — the sort of player who makes a defenceman rush a breakout pass on the third shift of a period.

Sixteen goals as a first-year OHL player who was never drafted into the league is a real result. Most players in that situation score five.

The puck-battle number that complicates the picture

Here is the flag, and it is a meaningful one. Pepoy's puck-battle win rate last season was about 45 per cent, among the lowest of any Saginaw forward. For a player whose entire identity is built on a heavy, forechecking style, that is the wrong number to be worst on your team in.

Turnovers were also an issue — what one analysis described as classic hero-puck mentality, trying to make the play himself rather than the simple one. The mitigating note is that he consistently worked to regain possession after losing it, which is a coachable-versus-uncoachable distinction that matters at this stage.

Put together, the profile is a physical winger who is not yet actually winning the physical exchanges. That gap closes with strength and technique for some players and never closes for others. At 18, listed under 185 pounds on a 6-foot-1 frame, there is obvious room to add mass.

Lindenwood, and the NCAA timeline that buys Toronto years

Pepoy is committed to Lindenwood University in Missouri for 2027-28. That timeline is the most interesting part of the pick from Toronto's side.

The NCAA route gives the Maple Leafs an extended development runway at no cost to their 50-contract limit — a genuine constraint for a club that has spent this summer operating at 49 of 50 contracts. Pepoy can spend another OHL season, then multiple college years, developing on someone else's budget while Toronto holds his rights.

Lindenwood is not a blue-blood program, which cuts both ways. Less competition for ice time and a larger role, but weaker opposition and less exposure. For a player whose issues are strength and puck-battle technique rather than skill, a heavy role at a smaller program is not a bad place to fix them.

Where he fits in a deeper Toronto pipeline

Two years ago, a sixth-round forechecker would have been notable simply because Toronto's system was empty. That is no longer the case. The Marlies won the 2026 Calder Cup, Gavin McKenna arrived first overall, and Daily Faceoff ranked Toronto's prospect pool 15th in the league — middle of the pack, but a dramatic improvement from where it sat.

In that context, Pepoy is depth rather than hope. He slots behind McKenna, Easton Cowan, Ben Danford, Tyler Hopkins and the rest of the group that made the Marlies a championship team, and behind the 2026 class's earlier selections. He is the sort of prospect who becomes relevant in 2030 or not at all.

One honest note on the fit: Toronto's pipeline still has a shortage of pure finishers, and Pepoy is not one. He is a bottom-six projection at best — the kind of player who, if everything breaks right, becomes a fourth-line winger who kills penalties. Sixth-round picks that turn into fourth-liners are wins.

The 2026 class Pepoy belongs to

Context helps here. Toronto made 10 selections at the 2026 draft, headlined by Gavin McKenna at No. 1 overall after the club won the lottery from the fifth-best odds at 8.5 per cent. Alexander Bilecki, a 6-foot-2 left-shot defenceman from the Kitchener Rangers, went 60th. Cooper Williams was a fifth-round pick headed to North Dakota. Pepoy came two rounds later.

The pattern across the back half of that class is consistent and deliberate: size, motor, and an NCAA or overage development path that costs Toronto nothing in contract slots. It is the approach of a front office that inherited a thin system, spent its first-rounder on a generational forward, and used the rest of the weekend accumulating cheap swings at bottom-six NHLers.

That is the right approach for a club in Toronto's position. Sixth-round picks are not where you find top-nine forwards. They are where you find the fourth-liner you would otherwise have to sign for $1.5 million in free agency, and a cap-constrained roster needs several of those.

What's next

Pepoy is not expected at NHL training camp in any meaningful capacity, though he could appear at the NHL Prospect Challenge in Gatineau on Sept. 12-13 if Toronto includes him on the roster, which has not yet been announced. His real 2026-27 assignment is a second OHL season with Saginaw.

What to watch: the puck-battle rate, and whether the scoring rate climbs past 0.6 points per game. A second-year OHL winger who adds 10 pounds and gets to 45 points has a development curve worth tracking. One who repeats 29 points does not. Follow the full 2026 class on our draft page.