Toronto Maple Leafs executive Mats Sundin appears on a video screen after the team won the NHL draft lottery for the first pick on Tuesday.Stephen Whyno/The Associated Press
As they pulled the winning ball in the lottery on Tuesday night, the camera swung to Toronto’s new hockey executive with a title no one can remember or understand, Mats Sundin.
Sundin had a ‘Why is everybody staring at me?’ expression on his face. Someone screamed, “The Toronto Maple Leafs have won the NHL draft lottery!”
Without any interim expression, Sundin transitioned immediately to a wide grin, looked into the camera and popped his eyebrows. Like he knew this would happen and was hamming it up.
Do you sometimes think you’re living in the Matrix? This was the closest you may get to solid proof. Maybe it really is all fixed.
On Monday night, the Leafs were the biggest uncontrolled burn in professional sports. The smoke rising from 50 Bay St. was visible from space. If they’d come out Tuesday morning and announced that they were taking 2026-27 off for personal reasons, people would have understood.
Cathal Kelly: John Chayka's tenure with the Maple Leafs begins under intense scrutiny
Now things are fine.
That’s what winning the draft lottery does for a hockey team. You got problems? Not any more, brother. All of a sudden, you’re on top of the wave that was going to crush you yesterday, surfing it into the future.
The next move is obvious – Toronto takes 18-year-old Yukon-born Penn State alum Gavin McKenna first overall in June’s draft. Not because McKenna, a winger, is exactly what they need. They will do it because McKenna is the consensus No. 1 pick.
The Leafs just got creative by tapping John Chayka, a guy who couldn’t get a job in hockey, to run their hockey ops. Based on the reaction to that hire, they may never be creative again. If you got them a set of colouring pencils for their birthday, the Leafs would slap them out of your hands.
A day after getting a frosty welcome to Toronto, Leafs GM John Chayka (centre) will get an easy and splashy move to make in his first NHL draft, Cathal Kelly writes.Michael Chisholm/Getty Images
Assuming it is McKenna, he solves all their immediate problems.
McKenna moves the club from the rebuild-soon column back to the win-now column. He probably won’t do that through his play. Even defining talents like Connor McDavid and Macklin Celebrini needed a season to get used to the NHL. McKenna has a long way to go before anyone puts him in that sort of company.
But McKenna smooths over many problems simply by existing. People will assume he is going to be great, even if he doesn’t start out that way. The hype around him will dull the spirit of the naysayers. As of right now, it’s no longer cool to dunk on the Leafs. For a few weeks, at least.
Sundin, who has zero managerial experience, goes from a question mark to the club’s lucky charm. Wherever he is, people will believe his good vibes will make things okay.
Chayka has the easiest first move of any GM in history. There was a world in which the Leafs lost this pick to the Bruins, forcing Chayka to immediately start swapping tires while the car is moving. Given how people feel about the new boss, every one of those trades would have been greeted like Gordie Howe for a Starbucks gift certificate. You’d be able to hear the yelling from your basement.
Now Chayka can ease into the job with a can’t-miss move. Even if it misses, it won’t do so for several years.
McKenna’s arrival makes it easier to sell the Leafs’ other No. 1 pick, Auston Matthews, on the idea that he isn’t a passenger on a hot-air balloon whose pilot light has gone out. If Matthews wants to force a move now, he’s going to have understand that people won’t understand why he’s doing that. If he goes, he’ll be the bad guy, and hockey players hate that idea.
Mostly, the atmosphere around the team – which, since the Olympics, has been like the opening five minutes of a movie in which all the characters die – will brighten. Angry fans will ease off. Jerseys will fly off shelves. Everyone who was sad will be happy.
Also, this doesn’t change much.
Leafs captain Auston Matthews will get a new injection of young talent to the roster. Many thought that wouldn't be possible this year with the team's first-round pick headed to Boston if it fell outside the top five.Dan Hamilton/Reuters
McKenna will be expected to be a star right out of the box. While I’m sure they like their hockey in rural Pennsylvania, it’s not Toronto in the midst of an identity crisis. There is a more than average chance that McKenna will be crushed under the weight of expectation.
Unless he’s got a really big trunk, McKenna will not arrive with an elite puck-moving defenceman, or a young second-line centre with big upside, or a goalie who doesn’t leak like cheesecloth – all things the Leafs need more urgently than a callow teenage forward.
Keeping this year’s first-round pick means the Leafs will lose next year’s, and the one for the year after that. So regardless of how good or bad the club is going forward, McKenna is the last young hotshot for a while.
With that in mind, what Leafs got tossed on Tuesday night wasn’t a life preserver. Those will float indefinitely. Instead, the bouncing balls tossed them a door.
If you’ve seen Titanic, you know that there isn’t much room on a door, and that it’s hard to stay balanced on one of them. You have to hope the water isn’t too cold, and that someone shows up to save you fairly quickly.
Had the Leafs won the top pick after a tank, this would all be good news. Fan and media patience would be boundless. Pressure would be measured. Matthews & Co. got the benefit of all of that when they arrived, and it still didn’t work out.
McKenna won’t have an & Co. It’s just him. People haven’t adapted to the idea that this club isn’t any good (though it isn’t). They still think it’s a contender. So there’s no time, and zero patience. The pressure will be bone crushing.
By all means, enjoy it. The Leafs just caught a bullet in their teeth. Now let’s see if they can catch a half-dozen more.