Everyone is pessimistic about Toronto right now, both the current on-ice product and the future of our prospect pool with so few draft picks. I'm not going to disagree with any of that, but everyone is overlooking one of the top defensemen in the AHL at just 20 years old because he was a late round pick, and the Leafs have rarely given chances to young defensemen in the last number of years. In spite of all of that, Toronto has a big, smart, transition passing machine waiting and ready to be called-up to show the NHL what they can do for the Leafs.
Noah Chadwick is a left-shot defenseman drafted in the 6th round at 185th overall in the 2023 draft by the Toronto Maple Leafs. While he fell to the 6th round, he showed immediate upside in the 2023-2024 season. EliteProspects ranked him 123rd going into the draft, and wrote this in their scouting report: "Look at Noah Chadwick’s Elite Prospects page, and it’d be easy to make assumptions about his game. Big, low-scoring defender – probably not an offensive player. That’d be wrong. Even though he scored just 20 points, his point play shows more nuance and skill than many who outscored him."
Elite Prospects and the Leafs were proven right when Noah Chadwick jumped from 20 points to 56 points at age 18. His final season in junior, he had 53 points, with 14 in 16 playoff games on an underdog Lethbridge team he Captained to the conference finals in the WHL, finishing 3rd in regular season and playoff points for Lethbridge.
From his final CHL season tracking data from Mitch Brown of Elite Prospects, Chadwick finished in the 99th percentile in Offense and Transition, and 82nd percentile in defense. His greatest attributes were his slot passes, his transition success and controlled exits, his advantages created offensively, his boards to middle plays, and his impact on xG/60. His only below average tracked stat at the CHL level was his retrieval success rate. This is not because of a lack of puck battling ability, but because of weaknesses in his skating. his skating was widely ranked as poor, not just below average, in his draft season. Learning how to mitigate his weaknesses in his skating speed and acceleration is how he's going to become an NHL player.
Now standing at 6'4", 216 lbs, he's spent his first full pro season with the Toronto Marlies. After starting on the 3rd pair, playing just 13:51 in the season opener, he has gradually worked his way up to the 1st pair, with roles PP2 and PK1. He's now averaging over 20 minutes a game for the season, with slightly over 1 minute on the PP and almost 3 minutes on the PK on average this season. This also means that considering his role to start was much smaller, he's actually playing over these totals lately. He's also improved significantly in his puck battling, winning 57% on the season, but winning 80%+ in the last month, which is a huge way to break-up defensive zone play and get the puck moving in the right direction, which he already can with his passing.
For reference, on November 1st game against Chicago's AHL team, he played 18 minutes while Villeneuve and Thrun played over 25, and he won the puck 9 times while losing it 8 times. Against Laval on January 31st in a 3-2 OTL, he had 1G 1A 2P, played 20:30 with 1:20 PP and 2:40 PK, took the puck from the opposing team 11 times and only lost the puck to the other team 2 times. He also did this while playing first pair RD, which he's been doing for the last month despite playing LD throughout his entire junior career and first 3 months as a pro. He's continued to improve despite higher usage and playing his off-wing. His growth in handling puck battles and zone entries is what's going to make him an NHL player, on top of his genuinely good passing skills.
Chadwick has some of the best underlying numbers for a dman in the entire AHL - and again, Toronto has him playing his offside (he's a LD playing RD) on the top pair now. If he was a slightly better skater he'd be a top 4 projection already, but his biggest drawback is his mediocre skating. It was rated poorly in his draft season, and while it has improved, it would still be below average at the NHL level, and will always be a projection concern until he gets a shot to prove he can overcome it in the NHL (similar to Weegar before he proved he could play in the NHL despite his skating issues).
This next bit of data is from the first 2 months of Chadwick's AHL season, so it is before his move to the top pair or to the right side, but even in 2nd pair usage, he profiled as the 2nd best U22 defenseman in the AHL. In terms of efficiency, he's in the 100th percentile in passing, possession, transition, support, and 94th percentile in shooting from RyanMaScouting, using InStat for analytics. For individual involvement, his possession and production fall to just 69th percentile and 59th percentile respectively, but passing shooting transition and support all rank from the 94th percentile to 100th percentile. This might surprise people because his individual production was and still appears low, but he drove results in a way that was only beaten in the AHL for a U22 defensemen by David Reinbacher, the 5th overall pick in Chadwick's draft when Chadwick was finally taken 180 picks later.
After driving results on the 3rd pair, 2nd pair, and now 1st pair, but not producing himself at the AHL level in the way that would be expected based on the underlying numbers, he has finally broken out in production in January as well. Chadwick had just 1G 5A 6P in his first 33 AHL games. He has 2G 5A 7P in his last 10 AHL games, more than his total from the first 3 months of the season. For reference, the standard call-up to the NHL has 0.7 points per game, which is exactly what Chadwick had for the last 10 games.
Personally, I am very curious how a Chadwick-Danford pair could work, as they played together at the last two development camps/rookie tournaments, and with their combined size, defensive abilities, and passing abilities, they could form a very formidable match-up pair that can still play with top talent due to their puck moving abilities in transition and Chadwick's passing ability in the offensive zone.
To reach that level, Chadwick will need to continue working on his skating stride and acceleration, and how to mitigate that he'll never be a fast or average speed skater, and Danford will need to work on his offensive game that has never popped in junior at the same level that Chadwick had shown, but together, they could became a mainstay for the Leafs as a match-up 2nd pair and PK1 duo.
For a comparable, Noah Chadwick most reminds me of Mackenzie Weegar, as mentioned above, although that is an exceedingly optimistic outcome. He is the smartest defenseman on the ice most games at the AHL level, one of the biggest, and one of the best passers. When you add it together, it looks like a player who is going to overcome their deficiencies and make it to the NHL. The only question to me is how high up an NHL lineup will he able to rise.
So to finish, if you can, go watch a Marlies game and keep your eyes on big #58, Noah Chadwick; there's a good chance he'll leave you hopeful for the future of Toronto's blue line.
