The Stanley Cup playoffs are done, and I have started thinking about how I will fill the hours in the summer ahead. Spend time with my family? Good God! With that thought in my head, I decided to look forward to the draft. The #5 pick has got me a little excited. What can we expect? How much spare time did I put in this? The answer for both is "a hell of a lot".

I have read many articles speculating about who the Leafs will be drafting, and that is all fine and good. I have read articles about previous picks at this spot, and that was very exciting yet often terrifying. Here are a few that jumped out at me that fall into both categories:

- 1988: Daniel Dore (Who?)

- 1989: Bill Guerin (That's better)

- 1990: Jaromir Jagr (Drool-worthy)

- 1996: Ric Jackman (Oh deer)

- 2000: Raffi Torres (Oh no...)

- 2001: Stanislav Christov (Getting worse)

- 2003: Thomas Vanek (Back on track)

- 2005: Carey Price (That would help)

- 2006: Phil Kessel (Can they trade him for Seguin?)

- 2008: Luke Schenn (Ahhh....)

After settling myself down, I realized that chances are pretty good that the #5 pick will result in a decent Leaf player in the future. As long as management doesn’t rush the player and fans don’t get all worked up and hold the player up on a pedestal with unrealistic expectations, we should be fine. Hopefully. I mean, I am sure it will work out…right?

Let’s face it. The NHL draft is a crap shoot. Sure, the top few picks generally produce excellent players, and the rest of the top ten or so picks will likely be serviceable players. But still, you may hit a home run, but you may completely strike out as well. A high draft pick can still land you Rick Dipietro, Hugh Jessiman or Petr Taticek.

Plus, anything after the first round is like throwing darts with a blindfold on. Look at this year’s nominees for major trophies for proof. Hart/Vezina nominee Henrik Lundqvist was drafted 205th. Halak and Elliott, the current Jennings trophy winners, were both selected in the 9th round in 2003. The highest drafted Norris Trophy nominee this year is Erik Karlsson, drafted 15th (Weber was 49th and Chara was 56th).

People always point to teams like Detroit as evidence of a club that has mastered the draft. Detroit’s best three players have been late round steals (Lidstrom, 53rd overall, Datsyuk 171st and Zetterberg, 210th). On the other hand, the only Leaf of consequence drafted late was the rosy-cheeked Tomas Kaberle, selected 204th in 1996. Still, plucking unknown Europeans out of the later rounds is getting harder and harder. A lot are coming to North America to play Major Junior hockey.

Some teams consistently find talent later in the first rounds, once the "sure thing" top picks are already talking to the media with their fancy new team sweaters and hats on. New Jersey is one example. They consistently draft late but pluck out gems that others have passed over (Brodeur, Parise, and Zajak were drafted around the 17-20 range).

So, are these teams drafting well or drafting lucky? It is a relatively small sample size to draw conclusions from. Even still, with a handful of picks throughout the draft, shouldn’t every team be expected to nail one or two each year?

If you apply that lens to the Leafs, the answer is actually no. The Leafs draft record is not good. They employed the famous "Draft Shmaft" attitude while purging picks for quick fixes. When they did keep draft picks, they often traded the young prospects before they developed, or alternatively, killed players by throwing them into the fire before they were ready.

Still, the Leafs have made some horrible decisions at the draft table (or had terrible luck depending on how you feel about the dart board analogy). I looked at a 10 year window, from 1999-2008. If a blind squirrel will eventually find a nut, you would think that if you shook the Leafs’ draft tree hard enough one would eventually fall into their laps.

Take a second to think about what pick the Leafs made over those ten years that has the highest number of points per game played. Before I tell you, take a couple shots of Pepto first. The answer would be Brad Boyes, at 0.67 points/game. That would be the guy the Leafs decided to ship off to San Jose before he played a single game in the NHL (along with Alyn McAuley and a first round pick that ended up being Mark Stuart). In return, the Leafs got 79 games and 60 points from Owen Nolan. Oh, they also got sued over Nolan’s misdiagnosed knee injury…let’s not forget that.

Just as a measuring stick, using 2011-12 stats only, there were 108 players that finished with a PTS/G higher than the 0.67 PTS/G career average owned by Brad Boyes. I know this isn’t a perfect comparison, but 108 players in the NHL last year had a higher PTS/G than any Leaf draft pick over ten years. They have made 87 picks in that time. Ugghh.

Next on the list of Leaf draft picks is Alex Steen (0.56 PTS/G, but most productive time has been with St. Louis after he was traded with Carlo Colaiacovo for the pylon Lee Stempniak). Nik Kulemin, the only Leaf player of any consequence drafted and still playing for the team, is 3rd with 0.50 PTS/G. The wheels fell off a bit for him this year, however an optimist would hope for a return to form. Depressed yet? How about Kyle Wellwood (0.49 PTS/G), Matt Stajan (0.47 PTS/G) and Victor Stalberg (0.41 PTS/G) rounding out the top six players. How does that make you feel? Boyes, Steen, Kulemin, Wellwood, Stajan and Stalberg are the top six forwards drafted over ten years. Dear God.

You could argue that the Leafs have done better at drafting defensemen. Then again, given the crap sandwich of forwards listed above, that is not saying much. The Leafs best D draft picks during those 10 years have been Carlo Colaiacovo, my beloved Ian White and Carl Gunnarsson, Luke Schenn (fingers crossed) and the marginal at best Anton Stralman. OK, maybe they haven’t been that much better drafting defensemen.

What about goalies? James Reimer is still a question mark, but let’s just hope for the best. Other than that, Leaf goalie draft picks are more famous for the trades that they were involved with than their production for the Blue and White. The Leafs chose draft pick Justin Pogge (7 NHL games played…well done) over Tuukka Rask. They traded Rask to Boston, where he will now take over since Tim Thomas has officially gone crazy. Andrew Raycroft, on the other hand, just managed to drive all Leaf fans crazy. The only other guy to play in the NHL was Mikael Tellqvist, who played 40 games over four seasons before he was traded for the pick that ended up being Matt Frattin. Is that considered a win?

Sadly, there have been years that the Leafs completely came up empty. In 1999, the Leafs drafted nine players. Only one, Pierre Hedin, managed to play in the NHL. Well, he played for 3 games. Three games played for nine different picks! That is just remarkable. They did not do much better in 2000 (Backup Telqvist and Boyes who was traded), 2003 (only John Mitchell really did anything, and he did not do a lot), 2004 (Justin Pogge and Robbie Earl!), 2005 (Rask, traded, and Stralman). In 2008, they traded up for Schenn, but did not pick anyone else of any consequence.

The only draft years that the Leafs can claim that things didn’t go horribly wrong:

• 2001: The Leafs were consistent, however no real stars emerged. They picked Colaiacovo, Karl Pilar, Brendan Bell, Jay Harrison, Kyle Wellwood and Maxim Kondratiev (part of the Brian Leetch trade)
• 2002: The Leafs did well to pick 3 serviceable players: They picked Alex Steen, Matt Stajan and Ian White. The latter two were at least flipped in the Phaneuf trade.
• 2006: The Leafs picked 7 players. Only two have not made it to the NHL, although the Leafs did just sign Leo Komarov and expect him to play next year. The Leafs grabbed Jiri Tlusty (playing regularly for the Canes, now keeping self-portraits to himself), Kulemin, Reimer, Korbinian Holzer (Marlies) and Stalberg (traded).
• 2007: Way too early to judge, but let’s give the Leafs credit for getting Frattin late (99th pick), and Gunnarsson even later (194…Kaberle territory!).

Now that you may be doubting the Leafs’ ability to draft anyone that can help, let’s see what teams with the #5 pick have done in the past. But, instead of looking at just the previous number 5 picks, I did that already, let’s look at the entire draft class for teams picking fifth as a comparison. As I mentioned, in 2008 when the Leafs drafted Schenn, he was the only player that panned out. The same can be said for Washington, who picked Karl Alzner in 2007. Let’s be fair, it is still way too early to fairly judge those draft classes. What about before that (I am only including picks that made it to the NHL for more than a cup of coffee)?

• 2006: The Bruins grabbed Kessel at #5, but also selected Milan Lucic and Brad Marchand. Not a bad draft class. Kessel’s replacement, Tyler Seguin, along with Lucic and Marchand were a pretty big part of that Stanley Cup run, weren’t they?
• 2005: Montreal took Carey Price, Guillaume Latendresse, Matt D'Agostini and Sergei Kostitsyn. Not too shabby.
• 2004: Phoenix get Blake Wheeler, then followed up with Enver Lisin, Kevin Porter and Daniel Winnik. Shabby.
• 2003: Buffalo scores fairly well with Thomas Vanek, Clarke MacArthur, Jan Hejda and Nathan Paetsch.
• 2002: Pittsburgh received some eventual trade chips with Ryan Whitney (flipped for Chris Kunitz and Eric Tangradi in the Pens Cup winning year), Erik Christensen (part of the Hossa trade the year before) and Maxime Talbot.
• 2001: Anaheim picked a highly touted Russian forward, Stanislav Chistov, that did not amount to anything at #5. Wait, this was before Burke took over in Anahiem right? Yes! Thank God, no reflection on any potential flashy Russian #5 picks for this year then. The Ducks also busted out with a back-up goalie (Martin Gerber) and late bloomer Islander P.A. Parenteau. Not much to show.
• 2000: The Islanders draft Raffi Torres at #5. The only other player that skated in the NHL (gingerly) was Rick DiPietro, but since he was drafted #1 it doesn’t really count for this comparison. Then again, the Islanders don’t really count either.
• 1999: The Islanders again, and they did slightly better I guess. Tim Connolly, Taylor Pyatt and Radek Martinek are not terrible. They aren’t good either, but…

So there you have it. I have clearly wasted a lot of time on this, but that is what the off season is for. You can now pop a few Tums and Tylenol and wait until draft day. Even though the Leafs have not done all that well drafting players, it is clear that the last few drafts have been better. Brian Burke has placed a stronger emphasis on the draft, and has also been stocking up on players that were first round picks like Gardiner and Colborne in recent trades, as well as college free agents.

Still, the draft is clearly the path to success. Look at your Stanley Cup Champions, the LA Kings. They have held on to their prospects, developed them and they now are reaping the rewards. They also were able to part with Simmonds and Schenn to get Mike Richards, but their core came through the draft: