Maple Leafs might have a hidden gem in 5th-round pick Harry Nansi

The Toronto Maple Leafs have some of the most bare cupboards in the entire league when it comes to prospects. Of course, this is to be expected when you’ve made the playoffs nine straight years and have been buyers at the trade deadline more often than not. The team currently doesn’t have a first round pick until 2028, after trading first round picks in both 2026 and 2027 to acquire Scott Laughton and Brandon Carlo at last season’s trade deadline. This means that the amateur scout’s job becomes that much more important, as hitting on later round picks here and there is imperative if you’re not picking in the first round regularly. It’s far to early to call 2025 fifth-round pick Harry Nansi a steal, per se, but he’s looking like an excellent gamble.

A native of Nepean, Ontario, the Maple Leafs selected Nansi, a forward for the OHL’s Owen Sound Attack with the 135th overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft. At the time of his selection, he was one of the youngest players in the draft class. His September 10th birthday was exactly one week ahead of the cutoff, meaning that if he was born on September 17th that same year, he would have been ineligible for the draft and would have been a member of the 2026 class instead.

Nansi’s stats from his rookie season don’t jump off the page at you, with only seven goals and 23 points in 67 games. So, you can imagine heads have turned in his direction with his performance in 2025-26 so far, already matching his goal total in half the amount of games as well as surpassing his point total in the same amount of games. At the time of filing, he has 34 points in 26 games. To put things into perspective here, Ryan Roobroeck, a forward for the Niagara IceDogs who is expected to be a first-round pick in 2026, has 22 points in 22 games so far. That’s not to say that Nansi would have been a top-10 pick in this draft had he been born a week later, but the fact that he’s hanging, and in some cases, outpacing the draft-eligible players around him is a very good sign for the Maple Leafs.

Although his size is perhaps the most immediately appealing factor, standing at 6-foot-3 and 179 pounds, much of Nansi’s skill revolves around the playmaking side of the game. This is evident in the fact that he’s got seven more assists in half the games than he did all of last season points to that, and he’s had several moments this year to put the OHL on notice, including a five-point effort against the Erie Otters to help earn him player of the week honours in the OHL.

Daily Faceoff prospect guru Steven Ellis, who was rather critical of the Maple Leafs’ prospect pool as a whole, liked the Nansi pick for the Maple Leafs. He wrote the following about him.

“Harry Nansi is another big body – and a guy some people viewed as a potential second or third-rounder. Decent pick for Toronto. Never stops moving. Good energy guy. At this point, work the selection. We’ll see if his skating catches up, but I like him as a playmaker.”

Nansi is aware that it’s a long road to the NHL, so he made sure to absorb everything he could at Maple Leafs Development Camp back in July. He spoke about wanting to improve his balance and pointed to advice he got from coaches to improve in that regard.

“Puck battles,” Nansi told reporters in July when asked if there was a specific area he was working on. “I have tendencies to fall down a lot, so I learned from one of the coaches to shift my body a bit so I can embrace the impact more.”

Development camp clearly helped Nansi prepare for the 2025-26 OHL season given his performance so far, and he spoke about his gratitude for the experience and how it will help him on his journey to the NHL.

“Really life-changing,” he said when asked about his experience at camp. “At first it was a dream just to make it to the big leagues, and I’m one step closer to making it happen.”

The past couple of years of watching the Maple Leafs have shown that as much as Leafs fans love skill players and goal-scorers, the true way to win them over is to simply work your tail off and bring the same energy every night. Even if Nansi isn’t a point-per-game player once he reaches the NHL level, if he gets there, he’s doing himself a big favour by prioritizing his energy and work ethic. The fact that he’s already taken such a big step forward in his sophomore season shows that there is indeed more to his game than other scouts may have seen when the Leafs drafted him in the fifth round, and if he’s winning over his head coaches at each level and continuing to earn himself opportunities to showcase his talent, the rest of his game will follow.

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