10 years after the Maple Leafs’ lucky number 13 lottery ball landed them Auston Matthews, Mats Sundin himself represented the organization at the 2026 lottery. He proved to be a winner yet again.

The Toronto Maple Leafs have won the 2026 draft lottery. 

To say the Leafs and their fans badly needed this is putting it mildly. 

Hitting on the draft lottery, with an opportunity to select what will hopefully become a star player, significantly transforms the franchise’s future outlook.

The reality is that the Leafs mailed it in down the stretch this past season. They were the worst team in the league after the Olympics, collecting just 15 points in 25 games. They still didn’t fire their coach, essentially allowing the season to rot away while publicly declaring that they don’t believe in tanking. In the end, they effectively tanked.

Fans were upset when the season ended because one fewer point would have all but guaranteed the Leafs kept their top-five protected pick, but it’s a little harsh to frame it that way, given how unbelievably bad they were for such an extended period. You can only be so bad in the modern-day three-point-game NHL; you’ll naturally pick up a few points along the way.

In the end, all is well that ends well. And boy, did this end well.

The debates between Gavin McKenna, Ivar Stenberg, and a defenseman will all have merit moving forward, and we will obviously perform a deep dive on the options in the days and weeks ahead.

Regardless of the final determination, though, it opens up a load of options for the Leafs. If it’s a forward, they add to a top six that already feasibly includes Auston Matthews, William Nylander, Matthew Knies, John Tavares, and, in all likelihood, Easton Cowan. They can load up with talent in that case, or they can even look to move one of those forwards for a defenseman. The Leafs could be eyeing a top-six forward group along the lines of this in short order:

Knies – Matthews – Nylander/Cowan
McKenna/Stenberg – Tavares – Nylander/Cowan

If it’s a defenseman the Leafs land on, they can look to clear some bodies, given they have six blue-liners signed already, and focus on supporting their forward group better. 

Any time a team finishes in the bottom five, the entire roster needs significant work. While defense stands out as the bigger need, at the end of the day, the franchise has to draft whoever it thinks is the best overall player in the draft class. You don’t pick Artyom Levshunov over Macklin Celebrini because of a positional need on defense. You draft the forward and trade a different forward for a defenseman, if necessary. 

This should plug a rather big hole somewhere in the Leafs’ lineup, while also giving them flexibility to potentially move out a logjam of talent in one position to fill out another. 

The domino effect should be felt almost immediately. This doesn’t make the Leafs flush with assets all of a sudden, but it does give them some real wiggle room to net out wins without needing to pull off completely crazy trade wins.

It will also give the Leafs an entire draft class of picks for 2026 — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6 — and it means that their next two first-round picks will be unprotected. 

First overall, clearly, provides major solace to those forfeited picks. So, too, does the fact that the Leafs already have a full draft class in 2027 with the following picks by round: 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6. 

The Leafs are set for two full draft classes at the moment, but another poor season would be tough to swallow, as the draft pick would immediately exchange hands. 

We should note that this draft doesn’t contain a consensus first overall pick in the vein of Connor McDavid. There is no Auston Matthews walking in and potting 40 goals as a rookie. It should be a very good player, but this should be kept in mind.

However, it still provides a much clearer path forward moving forward. The Leafs don’t own their first-round picks in the next two years. They are about to draft first overall and add said player to a young group that includes Easton Cowan, Matthew Knies, Ben Danford, Dennis Hildeby, and, hopefully, a few other young players who develop along the way. They can form a young nucleus while supporting the current core. 

The Leafs will need to remain competitive over the next two seasons regardless. They already said they were hoping to compete next season before this fortuitous draft lottery outcome. Now, there is no real doubt about the plan, at least for the 2026-27 season before Matthews enters his final year under contract.

There is also a certain big-time UFA looming in two years’ time, one who just watched the Toronto Maple Leafs win the draft lottery like the rest of us. 

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