Prospecting for Patience

When the new CBA was announced this summer, it contained a note about a change to the NHL/CHL transfer agreement.

NHL will reopen its agreement with the CHL to seek to
eliminate the mandatory return rule for 19-year-old
Players.

NHL will seek to limit NHL Clubs to Loaning no
more than one 19-year-old Player per year to the AHL
without the requirement of first offering such Player to his
junior Club.

The transfer agreement governs the rules that determine when NHL-drafted players can play in the AHL. The rule is that a player must be 20 years old in the calendar year the AHL season begins or have finished 4 full CHL seasons to be exempt from the loan requirement.

The proposed new rule follows this format, where the NHL team is obliged to offer the player to their junior team first – and to be clear, this isn't an offer teams ever refuse. The new rule would allow for one player per NHL team to be exempt from that rule a year earlier.

Given that players drafted to the NHL have a September 15 cutoff date, the ages of a draft class at the end of the calendar year they've been drafted in would either be 18 or 19 – excepting those players who are re-entries into the draft. Even with re-entry players, there are very few who are 19. So this rule would allow a very few players the option of direct to AHL promotion out of the draft, and then by the start of the second season post-draft all players would be at least 19.

This new rule will not come into effect – pending it being written into an agreement in the first place – until September 2026, so only those drafted in 2025 or a small percentage of those taken next summer could be promoted to the AHL under this rule. The Leafs have five players they just drafted, so in theory any one of them could go to the AHL in 2026-2027.

Is this likely? Your answer should be a resounding "no". Every year the head of Leafs scouting – Mark Leach or Wes Clark, the former head – will tell fans to be patient, that prospects getting to their pro-level takes three to five years. The reality is that three years is rare. To illustrate the path prospects take, I looked at all Leafs draftees from 2019 to today.

Note: any number in brackets is NHL regular season games played on any team. For players in Europe who sometimes appear on six or seven different teams as teenagers, I picked the team they played on the most unless it was an even split.

Some of those players were drafted after their first year of eligibility, but regardless, the years anyone could first hit age 19 and enter the AHL under this new rule is in the post-draft year or the one after it. Once you get to the draft plus 3 years, everyone is at least 20.

If you look down those columns, do you see anyone who maybe could have played in the AHL? Aside from the two who did, that is. We should look at them first.

Dennis Hildeby turned 21 the summer he was drafted, so he could have gone direct to the AHL. Nick Robertson actually did play at age 19 because the OHL season was cancelled due to Covid. He did fine there but it's hard to know if that accelerated his path to the NHL in any way.

Other than Robertson, the only possibility I see is Matt Knies. He has a late birthday, so if this rule had existed when he was drafted, he could have played in the AHL immediately. I think he could have done it, but I don't know if that would have been the best path for him. I don't think any 2025 draftees should be expected to hit the AHL early. NHL teams will use this exception for borderline NHLers like Robertson was, or someone like Shane Wright. Your random prospect taken in the third round or later is not going to be ready for the AHL that quick.

And now that that's out of the way, go back and look at the rest of that chart. The almost made it guys are easy to pick out before they get to the move to Europe phase in their fifth year. The legitimately valuable NHLer is lonely and obvious early as well. The role playing NHLer is also obvious. Some of the younger prospects that are likely NHL-capable at some level show up clearly. Nikita Grebenkin the most glaringly evident.

Patience is needed because most of the players any team drafts are not ready for the AHL at 19. But five years really is the outer limit of prospect development that could see the player get NHL games. If they haven't forced their team to give them NHL playing time by then, they aren't likely to get there. You can see this timescale reflected in the players who were never close to the NHL, but who got to a tougher pro league by their +5 year, or are moving into that league now like John Fusco, who signed an AHL deal with Hershey for next year.

Be patient. But not too patient, because the runway gets short after age 22.