Hunter and scouts aim to build on impressive prospect pool

As scouts, GMs and other NHL team executives work away in Buffalo, N.Y. for the League’s draft combine event, Maple Leafs director of player personnel Mark Hunter is in an enviable position: his team currently holds the No. 1 overall selection, two picks in each of the first four rounds of the draft, and 12 picks altogether. And after he and Toronto’s brass sat down this week and interviewed more than 90 young prospects as part of the combine process, Hunter is excited about what the organization will come away with when the draft is held in the same Western New York city on June 24 and 25.

That said, he and Leafs GM Lou Lamoriello aren’t going to allow their decision on any individual player based solely on what a nervous youngster might say in any one interview.

“I don’t think you write anybody off in an interview if they have a bad day,” Hunter said late Friday afternoon on a conference call with reporters. “(The prospect evaluation process is) from start to finish, and making sure that what you’re hearing early on in the season is the same as what you hear later on in the season. It’s been a good week here of taking to players, finding out about them, finding out about their family, seeing what they’re all about. These young men are very well-schooled, and it’s something that you don’t make a decision totally on these interviews by any means.”

The focus of the hockey world undoubtedly will be on the Leafs, who have a choice at the No. 1 pick that many believe narrows down to American centre Auston Matthews and Finnish winger Patrik Laine. And from Hunter’s perspective, both players have availed themselves excellently, most recently playing for their respective homelands at the 2016 IIHF World Championship in Russia.

“I really believe he’s a big, strong young man, who can shoot pucks, pass pucks, makes other people better,” Hunter said of Matthews, who had six goals and nine points in 10 games for the U.S. in Russia after amassing 24 goals and 46 points for Zurich of the Swiss elite league in the regular season. “He’s a guy who will play 200 feet. He’s an impressive young man that will have a great career in the National Hockey League.”

As for Laine – who suffered a minor left knee injury Friday and will only have upper body tests conducted Saturday – Hunter also …

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