Leafs fans are always talking about all their froward prospects / free agent signings / etc but how is their D aside from Gardiner / Rielly? Not to mention they don't have any decent goal tending in the pipeline, there's still a lot of work to be done unless they want to be the next Oilers with only forward depth.
Well, it's like I was saying earlier. The Leafs have a lot of 4,5,6 D in the system.
As of
now I'd probably say that Gardiner is a 2, Rielly is a 3, Marincin is a 4. They obviously don't have a 1, which is a big hole.
Then there's a jumble of Carrick, Valiev, Percy, Harrington, Corrado, and Loov, who have all spent some time in the NHL and can probably be adequate 5,6 guys, maybe one or two reach their ceiling of a 4. Zaitsev is, supposedly, someone who can step into a 2nd pair role now, so let's say he's a 4.
There's a couple other promising prospects in junior but I still don't really know what they're going to be, so let's ignore.
So basically the Leafs D depth is a lot better than the Oilers ever was. But unless they can get another top pair D, they're not going to be able to compete legitimately. The hope is Rielly develops into one but we'll see. They might need to get creative or lucky in an upcoming draft.