How good is the Maple Leafs prospect pool in 2026?

Corey Pronman of The Athletic ranked Toronto 12th of 32 NHL teams in under-23 talent in August 2026, a dramatic jump from a bottom-five system. Five Leafs appeared on his 156-name under-23 list: Gavin McKenna, Easton Cowan, Tinus Luc Koblar, Mans Gudmundsson and Patriks Pluminš.

What is the biggest weakness in the Maple Leafs prospect pool?

Pure goal-scoring. The pool is deep in playmakers, two-way forwards, defencemen and goaltending, but has no prospect whose defining NHL skill projects as finishing. Gavin McKenna had 36 assists to 15 goals at Penn State, and Easton Cowan scored 11 goals in 66 NHL games as a rookie.

Is Gavin McKenna a goal-scorer or a playmaker?

A playmaker. His 2025-26 Penn State line of 15 goals and 36 assists in 35 games reflects the profile scouts have described since his Medicine Hat years: elite vision and puck skills with a very good, but not generational, shot. NHL power-play time could raise his goal totals substantially.

Can Easton Cowan score 25 goals in 2026-27?

It is an aggressive projection but not an absurd one. Former Leafs winger Jay Rosehill has floated 25, and Cowan finished 2025-26 with nine points in his final 15 games after an inconsistent start. Reaching that number likely requires sustained top-six minutes alongside McKenna or Auston Matthews.

How much cap space do the Maple Leafs have to add a scorer?

None. Toronto is projected roughly $2.75 million over the $104 million upper limit for 2026-27 and sits at 49 of 50 standard player contracts. Max Domi's long-term injured reserve eligibility after late-May back surgery is the most likely route to compliance.

Who are the Maple Leafs' top prospects behind Gavin McKenna?

Easton Cowan is the closest to a full-time NHL role, followed by defenceman Ben Danford, goaltender Artur Akhtyamov, and European forwards Tinus Luc Koblar and Mans Gudmundsson. Danford played 16 games of the Marlies' 2026 Calder Cup run after finishing his OHL career.

Why does the Maple Leafs' goal-scoring gap matter now?

Toronto's scoring is concentrated in Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Matthew Knies. Matthews is $13.25 million against the cap through 2027-28 and a UFA in 2028, Nylander is 30, and both Matthews' last two seasons ended early through injury. The pipeline needs to produce a young scorer by roughly 2029.

The Maple Leafs Prospect Pool Has One Real Gap, and It's Goal-Scoring

A pool rebuilt in one summer, with one hole left in it

The Maple Leafs prospect pool went from a league-wide punchline to 12th of 32 in about fourteen months, which is the kind of turn that normally takes a full teardown. Corey Pronman's under-23 survey at The Athletic put Toronto there this week, and every honest accounting of John Chayka's first summer has to start by acknowledging it. The lottery helped enormously. So did trading NHL bodies for picks and young players instead of the reverse.

Now the uncomfortable part. Read through the scouting reports on Toronto's ten or so prospects who actually matter and a pattern shows up immediately: playmakers, two-way forwards, defencemen and goaltenders. What the pool does not have, at any level, is a player whose defining NHL skill is putting the puck in the net.

That is the one real gap in the Maple Leafs prospect pool, and it is not a small one for a team whose stated plan is to score its way back into the playoffs.

Where the Maple Leafs prospect pool actually stands

Start with the good news, because there is a lot of it.

Gavin McKenna is the best prospect in hockey and there is no serious dissent about that. Easton Cowan is an NHL regular at 21. Ben Danford came out of his final OHL season and played 16 games of a Calder Cup run with the Marlies. Artur Akhtyamov has become a legitimate NHL-starter bet in goal. Tinus Luc Koblar, Mans Gudmundsson and Patriks Pluminš all cracked a 156-name league-wide under-23 list. The 2026 draft added ten picks on top of that, and the Marlies won a championship developing most of the group.

That is a functioning Maple Leafs prospect pool, and a functioning organization behind it. Eighteen months ago it was not.

But run the same list again asking only one question — who scores 30 goals in the NHL? — and the answer is nobody, or at best a maybe. That is the distinction between having assets and having the right assets.

The shape of the problem

McKenna is the cleanest illustration. In 35 games at Penn State he had 15 goals and 36 assists. Elite vision, elite puck skills, a very good shot that is not the headline trait. He is going to make everyone around him better and he is probably going to be a point-per-game player in short order. He is not, on current evidence, a natural finisher.

Cowan put up 11 goals in 66 NHL games as a rookie. That is a reasonable first season and it is not a scoring profile yet. Jay Rosehill floated 25 goals for him in 2026-27 and that is an aggressive read, though not an absurd one — Cowan finished last season with nine points in his final 15 games and the shot has always been better than the counting stats suggested.

Danford is a defensive defenceman who takes pride in what he calls the dirty work, and he had three goals in 45 OHL games. Gudmundsson and Koblar are projection plays in Europe. Akhtyamov is a goalie. None of that is a criticism of any individual player. It is a description of a pool with a consistent bias.

Prospect pools acquire a shape from how they were assembled, and the Maple Leafs prospect pool is no exception, and Toronto's was assembled by a front office correctly prioritizing best-player-available and skill over need. That approach is right. It also produces exactly this outcome when the best players available happen to be distributors and defenders.

Why the Maple Leafs prospect pool gap matters more here than elsewhere

Because of who is already here, and for how long.

Auston Matthews scored 27 goals in 60 games last season before a Grade 3 MCL tear ended his year in March. He is signed at $13.25 million through 2027-28 and is a UFA in the summer of 2028. William Nylander put up 30 goals and 79 points in 65 games and is 30 years old. Matthew Knies scored 23 and starts a six-year deal at $7.75 million this season. John Tavares is in his late thirties.

Toronto's goal-scoring is concentrated in three players, two of whom are on the wrong side of the curve and one of whom has now had two seasons cut short by injury. The most likely version of the next four years has the Leafs needing a young 30-goal scorer somewhere around 2028-29, right as Matthews' contract situation resolves one way or the other.

The pool does not currently contain that player. That is a planning problem, not a panic, and the distance between those two things is the whole point. We have written before about the two-year window Chayka is operating inside. The finishing gap is what the window looks like on the other side of it.

Who could disprove this

Three names, honestly assessed.

Cowan. The most likely candidate simply because he is the closest. If the shot translates and he gets top-six minutes with McKenna or Matthews, 25 goals is live. We laid out what that season needs to look like in our piece on Cowan's top-six audition.

McKenna himself. Playmakers who shoot well often become goal-scorers when they get NHL power-play time and NHL linemates, because the looks get easier. Put him on PP1 — which is where he is likely to start — and the goal totals may take care of themselves. This is the optimistic case and it is not a fantasy.

Koblar. The Norwegian forward is the pool's most interesting swing, a big body with a real release who needs a couple of years. His camp decision between Toronto and Rogle is one of the quieter forks in the organization's next three years.

Note what all three have in common: they are bets that a player becomes something other than what he currently is. That is a normal way to develop scorers. It is not a plan.

How a general manager actually fixes this

Three routes, in ascending order of cost.

Draft for it. Toronto will not have a lottery pick again — that is the price of being good, and being good is the point — so this means finding a shooter in the second and third rounds, which is where the Leafs have quietly done reasonable work lately. Slow, cheap, unreliable.

Trade for it. A young scorer on an entry-level or bridge deal is the single most expensive asset class in hockey right now, and Toronto is $2.75 million over the cap with one contract slot left. Not this year.

Buy it. Free agency is where teams overpay for goals, which is how you end up with a bad contract for a 32-year-old winger. See our take on the right-shot winger problem for how narrow that market gets.

The realistic answer is a combination: draft shooters late, develop Cowan properly, and accept that the McKenna-as-scorer question gets answered on the ice rather than in a plan.

What's next

Camp opens in the second week of September and the rookie group gets its first look before that. Watch Cowan's shot volume, not his point totals — volume is the leading indicator and it is the number that would tell you the profile is changing.

None of this diminishes what Chayka did in one offseason. Going from a bottom-five system to 12th while staying competitive at the NHL level is genuinely hard, and he did it. But 12th with one obvious hole is a description, not a victory lap, and the hole is the part that shows up in 2029. Track the full picture on our contracts page and player pages as camp approaches.