The NHL Redux: Nazem Kadri and the company he keeps

The Toronto Maple Leafs' draft history at Hockey Reference is one of the sadder, more disturbing pages on the Internet. What it's missing is a disclaimer.

It's there, however, where you can find answers to the many questions regarding Toronto's incompetence. This is a franchise that has been to the playoffs once in the 10 seasons since the canceled 2004-2005 campaign - in a shortened season, no less, punctuated by the most stunning Game 7 defeat we've ever seen.

If it can go wrong for the Maple Leafs, it will, usually in the most unfathomable way possible. On the ice and off the ice. A look at the Leafs' draft history shows miss after miss, and an almost shocking lack of homegrown offensive talent.

20 Goals

Nobody talks about 18-goal scorers. Twenty-goal scorers, though, they're different. We point them out because 20 is a nice, round number. A 20-goal scorer averages a goal every 4.1 games over an 82-game season. You've watched hockey, and played it, too: a goal every four games is something.

Nazem Kadri, drafted seventh overall in the first round by Toronto in 2009, scored 20 goals and added 30 assists in 2013-14, his first full 82-game season in the NHL. This followed his breakout season in the lockout-shortened 2013 campaign, when he had 18 goals - on a sky-high 16.8 shooting percentage - and 26 assists in 44 games.

An offensively gifted center, Kadri disappointed in myriad ways last season when he scored 18 goals in 73 games. With Mike Babcock now behind the Toronto bench, and potentially a more significant offensive role in Kadri's future, there's no reason to believe the London, Ontario product won't hit the 20-goal mark again. The only question is whether he'll do it in a Maple Leafs uniform.

A Not-So-Proud History

Going back 20 years into the Maple Leafs' draft history, the results are bleak. Since 1994, the list of Toronto first-round draft picks to score 20 goals in a season in the blue and white is two players long: Kadri and Nik Antropov, who accomplished the feat twice in Toronto. That's it.

The results get a bit better the further you go back. Compared to recent years, Toronto struck draft gold in the 1980s, selecting four players in the first round - Al Iafrate, fourth overall in 1984; Wendel Clark, first overall in 1985; Vincent Damphousse, sixth overall in 1986; and Russ Courtnall, seventh overall in 1987 - who scored 20 or more goals in a season as Maple Leafs a combined 13 times. Clark was the most prolific, scoring 30 or more four times, including a career-high 46 in 1993-94.

Draft Schmaft

Since '94, 10 other 20-goal seasons have been tallied by Maple Leafs' first-round picks, but those seasons came for other teams. Antropov and Kadri should have had company.

Twenty-goal scorers aren't only born in the first round, of course, and Toronto has unearthed some gems: second-round pick Nikolay Kulemin scored 30 in 2010-11. Mikhail Grabovski, acquired in a trade with Montreal, was a three-time 20-goal scorer in a Maple Leafs jersey. Alexei Ponikarovsky had three 20-goal seasons, too. Sergei Berezin, a 10th-round pick in 1994, scored 20 or more in Toronto four times.

And players selected by other teams in the first round - Mats Sundin, Phil Kessel, Joffrey Lupul, and James van Riemsdyk - have consistently filled the net in Toronto.

But it's guys like Tyler Biggs (22nd overall in 2011), Luke Schenn (fifth in 2008), Carlo Colaiacovo (17th in 2001), Luca Cereda (24th in 1999), Jeff Ware (fifth in 1995), and Eric Fichaud (16th in 1994) who have killed the Maple Leafs, as well as all the years - 1996, 1997, 2003, 2004, 2007, and 2010 - Toronto didn't draft in the first round.

There's also, unfortunately, the Tuukka Rask trade, and the Kessel trade - is Tyler Seguin a Maple Leaf today, in some alternate universe?

Who's Next?

Whether or not Kadri can reenter the 20-goal Maple Leafs first-round pick fraternity will be one of the main reasons to watch Toronto hockey this season. If Babcock can make a No. 1 center out of the soon-to-be 25-year-old, and Kadri remains a Maple Leaf long term, perhaps he'll do one 20-goal season better than Antropov.

But what matters most is who follows Kadri in joining the ultra-exclusive club. Kasperi Kapanen, acquired in the Kessel trade, was a first-round pick of the Pittsburgh Penguins, but he hasn't played a game in the NHL yet, and only four games in North America, so consider him homegrown - Toronto will gladly take all the goals the Finn scores. It's Kapanen and the first-round picks from the past four years that give Toronto hope for the latter half of Babcock's eight-year contract.

Kapanen, Morgan Rielly, Frederik Gauthier, William Nylander, and Mitch Marner are the future. Three out of five (Rielly, Nylander, and Marner) were top-10 picks, and that's where elite talent is typically found. Now it's up to the Leafs to develop the talent and show enough patience to watch the fruits of their labor take hold.

In the end, the club's destiny isn't only in the sticks of the players mentioned above, but in the process of developing NHL players who can contribute and hopefully become elite.

The kids must become prolific goals scorers in Toronto. And the Maple Leafs must ensure they don't make the same mistakes, so they're not watching the Kadris, Kapanens, Nylanders, and Marners score 20 or more, season after season, for other teams.