On June 26, when the 2026 NHL Draft begins, the future of the Maple Leafs will be dramatically altered.Exactly how, though, remains up for debate.The Leafs won the draft lottery and hold the first pick. In contrast with many previous drafts, there is diverging thought as to what the team will do. There is a presumptive No. 1 in Gavin McKenna, but there is also no Macklin Celebrini or Connor McDavid in this draft: a clear-cut, slam dunk No. 1 pick that can change the course of a franchise.The Leafs are also in a different place than most teams that pick No. 1: they are not starting from the ground up and looking to rebuild their team around one player.That’s what makes the decision fascinating.With the draft now on the horizon, we’ll be making the case in a series of stories for three different players: McKenna, Ivar Stenberg and Chase Reid. We’ll be looking at each player through a Leafs-specific lens while also considering the case against drafting each player, with final thoughts from draft expert Corey Pronman.There was a time when Willie Desjardins perhaps didn’t get Gavin McKenna.During the 2022-23 season, the Medicine Hat Tigers were looking to bring McKenna, the first pick from the 2022 WHL Prospects Draft, from his Under-18 prep team into the WHL. Desjardins, head coach of the Tigers (and the Vancouver Canucks and Los Angeles Kings before that), watched McKenna from the stands. At times, Desjardins was in awe. At others, he was confused.“(McKenna) would make plays that I couldn’t believe,” Desjardins said. “And then he’d make some plays that didn’t happen right away. I wondered why they didn’t happen. Because I saw the play and he didn’t take it.”Desjardins continued to watch things unfold with the puck on McKenna’s stick. McKenna circled the offensive zone, waiting and watching. And then, with game-changing vision, he pounced.Turns out, McKenna was just a step ahead of the seasoned head coach.“He looked at another couple plays, then went back to it,” Desjardins said. “It wasn’t that he was slow on the play; it’s just that he didn’t take that as his first option, looked for something else, it wasn’t there, then went back to it.”McKenna was young, and Desjardins realized that if he continued to wait, a player in a different category than his peers would emerge.“I’ve coached some pretty good players, like (Henrik and Daniel Sedin), who had unbelievable vision,” Desjardins said. “He’s certainly in the category with those guys.”Those guys, of course, were first-ballot Hall of Famers — players who changed the trajectory of the Canucks franchise and brought the team as close to a Stanley Cup victory as possible without winning.It took time for the twins to reach that level. And even then, there were warts in their games that didn’t always make them complete players. But the early promise of the Sedins as superstars was enough for the Canucks to go after the pair in the draft. Because the idea that usually reigns at the top of the draft is a simple one: bet on the biggest talent.