Former Maple Leafs GM reveals why team passed on drafting Joe Sakic

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Say it ain’t so, Joe.

As the Maple Leafs grapple with all-star Mitch Marner’s likely departure, former general manager Gord Stellick brought up another story of a first-round pick, this one that got away at the draft table.

While it was well known that the Leafs passed on Joe Sakic in 1987 — as did 12 other clubs before Sakic went to the Quebec Nordiques — Stellick detailed how close the future Hall of Famer came to wearing Blue and White in a guest appearance on the Leafs Morning Take podcast.

Holding the seventh overall pick that year, the Leafs had an ad hoc committee with Stellick, who was then the NHL’s youngest GM at 30 years old, coach John Brophy and senior scouts, but all living with the whims of unpredictable owner Harold Ballard.

Big Peterborough Petes defenceman Luke Richardson was on their radar, but as it got close to Toronto’s turn, scouting director Floyd Smith made a convincing argument to consider Sakic.

With 60 goals and 73 assists for the Swift Current Broncos, Sakic was certainly attractive, but lacked bulk.

“The table (at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit) is up in arms, like ‘holy crap,’” Stellick recalled for the show’s hosts. “Brophy (who preferred scrappy players) was going nuts because he doesn’t like small centremen.

“John Brophy was our coach and he had way too much influence as a coach because the owner, Harold Ballard, liked him … It’s absurd. A coach who is even involved when you’re drafting. But he had the ear of the owner.”

That insured the Leafs took Richardson, but as was the case with many of their 1980s picks, they had no gradual development plan for him. He could’ve used another year of junior, but openly challenged Stellick’s plan to demote him and, while he did play 21 years with various teams, his Toronto tenure wasn’t as successful as hoped.

Stellick said he re-hashed the story with Sakic in 2012 at the latter’s Hall of Fame induction. The irony was that Sakic wasn’t even the Nordiques’ first pick that year. In a draft dominated by defencemen, they took Bryan Fogarty ninth before Sakic at 15th.

Two Hall of Famers led off that draft, with Pierre Turgeon going first to Buffalo and future Leafs president Brendan Shanahan second to the New Jersey Devils.

“I always think about that … c’est la vie,” Stellick concluded his story. “I’m sure that it worked out better for Joe Sakic.” 

Sakic had three 100-point seasons with Quebec, which changed addresses to Colorado in 1995 and won the Stanley Cup its first year in Denver. That was Sakic’s first of two as a player, the second coming in 2001, before adding the 2022 title as the team’s GM. He’s now the Avalanche’s director of hockey operations.

In his 1990 book, Hockey, Heartaches and Hal, with Jim O’Leary, Stellick spoke of another seventh overall pick that could’ve turned out much differently for the Leafs in 1983 during his time as a hockey office assistant. Stellick said Toronto scouts had been very high on physical scoring winger Cam Neely of the WHL’s Portland Winter Hawks, whom they were watching that year when Portland hosted  the Memorial Cup.

But Leaf coach Mike Nykoluk had an eye on Victoria’s smaller Russ Courtnall, who’d been injured before finishing the year with a flourish. Nykoluk left the game he was watching in Portland to call Courtnall and check on his progress, then left the tournament to visit Courtnall’s family in B.C. The Leafs took Courtnall a few weeks later, while a total of eight teams passed on Neely (Detroit was quite happy to pick Steve Yzerman fourth) before the Vancouver Canucks chose him ninth. He later scored 50 with Boston on his way to the Hall.

lhornby@postmedia.com

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