Draft Retrospective - How'd we do?

The draft just wrapped up in the City That Fun Forgot, so now it's time to start the conversation we'll be having for the next four months; how well did the Leafs do?

Here's what we got:

Luke Schenn, Jimmy Hayes, Mikhail Stefanovich, Jamal Mayers, Greg Pateryn, Joel Champagne, Jerome Flaake, Grant Rollheiser, and Andrew MacWilliams.

In my opinion Schenn was a fantastic move. The Leafs need a defenseman who can hit instead of yet another slick puck moving defenseman. For the same reason I like the Jimmy Hayes signing because he's enormous and could develop into a solid 2nd or 3rd line power forward.

I also like the Mikhail Stefanovich pick, he's very talented but apparently has a bad attitude. If Toronto can straighten that out we might have a third round steal on our hands, which makes me hate the Jamal Mayers deal even more. Toronto could have signed any number of UFAs on Tuesday instead of giving up a third rounder, and seeing that there were still big name players going in the third round just makes me think this will come back to haunt us. Remember the name Shawn Lalonde (any relation to Newsy? They look identical.), he'll probably be the next Niklas Lidstrom.

The rest of the signings are hard to judge since I don't know any of them and most of us have never heard of them. Hopefully some of you dutiful commenters know Mr. Pateryn or Flaake.

As for the poll, I'm leaning towards "Pretty good" but it's hard to not be optimistic about the future. The Leafs look like they made some slick moves on draft day and possibly stole a player in the third round. A few more years of tanking, player development and good drafting will start to build a good core for this team.