Thursday's FTB: Now we wait

Yesterday John Chayka did an interview on TSN radio:

He said that the first overall pick is "an organizational pick" which came after some discussion of expertise of the scouts. He then discussed the challenges of scouting for the draft in a way that makes me believe he wants to have it be clear that analytics is a part of the toolset, not the only tool.

(Also the body language in this video is a-mazing.)

While they all get on with their scouting, we should likely expect the cone of silence to come back down and not much to happen for some time.

The Marlies are still in action, playing on Saturday in their next game, which has been moved from Friday.

Men's Worlds starts on May 15, which is a week Friday, but now that we're all top-prospect watchers, you should know that Gavin McKenna is not playing for Team Canada, so he is out of action until Combine testing.

Ivar Stenberg is about to play today in the Beijer Hockey Games in Sweden. This is a national team competition, part of the Euro Hockey Tour with Sweden, Finland, Czechia and Switzerland. Sweden has already won this event, so they don't have any pressing need to do much here but sort out their roster for Men's Worlds. Oliver Ekman-Larsson is also participating in this event which wraps up on May 10.

I am slowly getting up to speed on the other top-ish prospects. Keaton Verhoeff and Chase Reid are also done and waiting for the Combine, so the Memorial Cup is not that important to us this year. It begins on May 21.

Right after the Mem Cup is over, the Combine runs from the end of May to June 6 in Buffalo, and we will be inundated with largely useless numbers about these prospects including updated heights and weights which will be taken way too seriously.

There is no Leafs business in terms of players, contracts or any other sort of activity that has to happen before the Combine. However, the front office remains officially unchanged beyond the addition of Chayka and Mats Sundin, so some changes there are inevitable. While it's been reported Shane Doan is leaving, he's still listed as employed by the team. I expect he's a little busy watching hockey in Buffalo right now.

Look for meaningful prospect coverage to begin around the Combine timeframe and in the interim, I'm going to do some more, frankly, superficial pieces on who the top four prospects are for those of us who have been happily in the dark until yesterday.

Hamilton hockey fans buzzing with excitement for new AHL team, no matter what it will be called

In other related news, the team will have a new coach as the current AHL head coach has been promoted:

#Isles News: The New York Islanders announced today that Rocky Thompson has been named Assistant Coach.
— New York Islanders (@NYIslanders) May 5, 2026

Buffalo took the opener over the Canadiens last night and something happened in the west while I was asleep. Tonight's game is Flyers hosting the Hurricanes.