2025 T25U25: Sam McCue is tied at #20

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Sam McCue had a promising D+1 season for a seventh round pick. He scored a lot more after moving into the top six on both Owen Sound, and then Flint after they acquired him to boost their playoff chances. They ended up losing to Kitchener in the first round and Kitchener ended up falling to London.

Sam McCue	Vitals
Age as of July 1	19.74
Position	LW
Height	6'2"
Weight (lbs)	187
Shoots	L
Draft Year	2024
Draft Number	216

The Player

When he was drafted, McCue was seen as a bottom-six, two-way winger who had size and was good on the puck. I think that read has all changed after this season, for good and for worse. In reality, McCue was a finisher and was very good at it. As for the rest of his game, we'll talk about it in a second.

After taking the OHL's player stats into a spreadsheet, I determined the following. McCue was 9th in OHL goals per game among qualified players. Ninth not just among his age-group, but in the league. I even took it a step further and he finished 13th in even-strength goals per game. There wasn't much more to takeaway from that – there's only so many ways to divide games played, goals, and shots – but overall McCue's offense was very good.

Then I went to go look at how he scored his goals. How is a great question to ask because either the player is developing the plays and creating the opportunities for goals, or they're benefitting from teammates who are doing that for them, or a combination of both. For a player like Easton Cowan (who ended with similar points to McCue), he does a lot of the work all over the ice to make those plays happen. You'll see for McCue that he's often at the end of the play and finishing the chance – and finishing it very well, to be clear.

Once again big thanks to Brigs for his Bluesky feed. It's an incredible searchable archive of plays from Leafs prospects last season. All I had to do was go to his profile and search McCue and I found so much great stuff.

#Leafs prospect Sam McCue calls game! He scores again on the powerplay to win it in OT, giving him three points on the game. He's up to 16 points in 15 games.
— Acceptable Treliving (@brigstew.bsky.social) 2024-11-10T02:53:32.109Z

#Leafs prospect Sam McCue scores his second goal of the game, again capitalizing off a turnover and sniping it for his 29th of the season.
— Acceptable Treliving (@brigstew.bsky.social) 2025-03-09T01:21:59.529Z

#Leafs prospect Sam McCue (#12 in white) through two periods tonight: 1 goal, 2 assists, 4 shots on net. In 28 games so far this season he's the team leader (or tied) in goals (18), points (30), shots (119), and +/- if that's your thing.
— Acceptable Treliving (@brigstew.bsky.social) 2024-12-12T01:52:02.402Z

#Leafs prospect Sam McCue just can't stop scoring! He puts home his second goal of the game, this one on the powerplay, for his 16th goal of the season and 6th in his last 4 games.
— Acceptable Treliving (@brigstew.bsky.social) 2024-11-24T01:23:17.824Z

#Leafs prospect Sam McCue helps create a turnover shorthanded, goes in all alone on the breakaway and roofs it for his 21st goal of the season.
— Acceptable Treliving (@brigstew.bsky.social) 2025-01-19T00:23:15.065Z

On the power play, McCue is the triggerman, shooting from the flanks or collapsing in for redirects or the occasional rebound. He's got a really good shot. You'll also see that he is aggressive when the other team is exiting the zone. He was able to create a lot of turnovers and finish on those opposition breakdowns.

One thing I didn't see was him using his size very much, instead his offense came from his shot or from using his feet. That said, defending in junior is often just waving your stick around so needing to battle for position is more rare. Ben Danford is an anomaly in that way. The script flips in pro hockey and it's all about taking the place you want to be rather than being there at the right time. This is a critical part of the game that's still unknown for me when it comes to evaluating McCue.

Fortunately for us, Brigs also provided for us Mitchell Brown's game tracking results for McCue and several other players. 2024-25 is on the left. 2023-24 is on the right.

You can see a big jump in goals. That comes from moving up the lineup. A lot of the other areas of improvement (shot pass success, cross-lane plays, etc) are resulting from better teammates, in my opinion. His improvements were solely in scoring results. There's not much good to say defensively from last season, and that's mirrored by the lack of clips where McCue was in the defensive zone. The most I saw from the clips were a turnover at the defensive blueline and an uncontested zone exit on the power play. You'll see later on that the chart for a player like Harry Nansi is much better, and someone like Cowan is off the charts.

McCue is heading into his final OHL season, now with the Brantford Bulldogs following an offseason trade. Brantford finished first in the Eastern Conference last season but lost in the second round to Danford's Oshawa Generals. They've lost their leading scorer as well as their 2C but expect McCue to take one of those places in the top-six and we'll see how they fare.

McCue will either be looking for a pro contract in the spring of 2026, or will go back for an overage season. I'm hoping for a more well-rounded season from McCue. I want to see him carry the puck in more, make more plays defensively (as much as possible for a winger), and overall create more plays.

The Votes

Keeping consistent with the bottom 20-ish names on this list, McCue was ranked at the end of a lot of lists as well as unranked by a couple voters. His highest vote was 15th, but most were in the 20s. McCue was an honourable mention in the Community Vote, an agonizing 26th.

Voter	Vote
Cathy	NA
Brigstew	19
Species	22
Hardev	20
shinson93	NA
Cameron	21
Zone Entry	24
Svalbard38	18
dhammm	25
adam	15
Weighted Average	21.6
Highest Vote	15
Lowest Vote	25

From me, I liked seeing the improvement in points, but points are levels of magnitude harder to come by in pro hockey if you're more of a one-dimensional player. My vote was a reward for the improved offense in a very shallow field of prospects.

The Opinions

Here is what the other voters thought (or not) about McCue, featuring a musical number from Zone Entry!

Brigstew: I’m curious to see McCue ranked close to, but ahead of, Plesovskikh. I see them as similar players, but I’d say the Russian is more of a complete player. McCue, I assume, got more love because people saw/heard of him more playing in the OHL vs Russian junior. He’s a menace in front of the net. He has natural finishing ability with a good shot and good instincts in close. He’s chippy and has a bit of size and plays a bit of a power game, but there isn’t much else there that’s high level enough. I think he’s fun, but boy does he have a ways to go to be even a specialized role player.

Shinson93: I like his style of play, but I just don’t think he has enough for his game to break through as a 7th rounder. I didn’t rank him.

Svalbard38: I got out to see McCue twice this year, once with Owen Sound and once with Flint, and both times he was well worth the price of admission. He’s a project for sure, but that’s what you sign up for with a 7th round pick. He’s willing to go to the net and his shot is good, and 18 goals in 20 (regular season) games after the trade to the Firebirds is definitely something to get excited about. My expectations are tempered for sure, but McCue had about as good a D+1 season as you could hope for from a 7th rounder.

Cathy: I didn’t know what to think about McCue so I think that’s why I didn’t rank him. I felt unsure that he’s going to walk into an AHL role and this is largely because junior hockey has more of an entertainment business aspect to it than the AHL, which is much more a true development league. You can find a role in the OHL (Hlacar, anyone?) by being a fun energy guy or by being a guy with a shot and nothing else. You don’t have to play hockey at all. And I think that might be McCue.

dhammm: It turns out Plesovskikh and McCue, two late-round-pick D+1 wingers from the same draft, profile similarly, so I ranked them about the same. McCue looks a little better by production, and the more I think of the OHL vs. the MHL, the more I’m thinking I owed McCue a little bump, but they have similar odds in most models.

Zone Entry:
Sam McCue
Sam McCue
Will he play for the white & blue?
Likely not
Odds are long
But the intangibles are strong
SO HEY
Go for it, Sam McCue

McCue plays for the team owned by Zach Hyman now. Will that transform him into one of the best net-front players in the NHL? No, but we'll see what happens in his age-20 season.

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