The Toronto Maple Leafs problem of not being able to develop a star player outside the top ten in the draft is going to be over soon.
And – not uncoincidentally – the Toronto Maple Leafs 54 year Stanley Cup drought will soon be over too.
While not every Leafs problem can be traced back to their problem developing a star outside the top ten, doing so would certainly cover a lot of warts. If you look at the teams who dominated for long stretches in the salary cap era so far (Detroit, Pittsburgh, Vancouver, San Jose, LA, Chicago, Tampa, Boston) their common denominator was that they all found superstar players outside the top ten.