10. The Latest Pick

The NHL draft’s various iterations have produced different lengths over the years. The shortest draft in NHL history was its third in 1965, a draft considered so weak on talent that the Leafs decided they weren’t even going to participate and just 11 picks were made in total, of which only two played NHL games. It peaked three and a half decades later, when the NHL’s 2000 expansion ballooned the league’s size to 30 teams at a time when the draft was already nine rounds long. So for five years before the draft downsized to its current seven-round format in 2005, an average of 291 players were selected each June.

The Leafs made their two latest draft selections in team history during that stretch, coincidentally picking 285th overall twice. One of those picks, Pierce Norton, was selected in 2004 out of Thayer Academy, a prep school in Braintree, Massachusetts. He played four seasons at Providence College but failed to stick with two ECHL teams, playing a combined 13 games for the Wheeling Nailers and Alaska Aces and never appearing at Leafs camp. The other, Staffan Kronwall, was selected six picks before the end of the 2002 NHL draft a few months before his 20th birthday, overcame tragedy as a child, carved out a brief NHL career in the shadow of his big brother, became a staple of the Swedish national team, and helped the KHL’s Lokomotiv Yaroslavl rebuild in the aftermath of a tragedy of their own.

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Kronwall was born in Jarfalla, a suburb a little more than 20 minutes outside of Stockholm, which today is home to 80,000 people, on September 10, 1982. He was raised as the youngest of three boys in a hockey family, with all three playing defence. His dad, Hans, was the local team manager for the 1977-born age group of the Jarfalla Hockey Club, for which his oldest brother, Mattias, played. Niklas, the family’s middle son who is a year and a half older than Staffan, became a star at an early age. When the three boys weren’t playing organized hockey, they spent all their spare time each winter at the local soccer field near their home, which was flooded and turned into an outdoor rink.

At an early age, though, Staffan and the Kronwalls’ lives changed. On Niklas’ 11th birthday, Hans didn’t wake up, passing of a heart attack in his sleep. Hans’ death ruined the nine-year-old Staffan and left the family’s matriarch, Tove, as the single mother of three growing boys. In the years that followed, because Tove worked a full-time job for copy machine maker Xerox to support the boys and keep them in hockey, Staffan had to grow up quickly, learning at a very young age to lead an independent life. As each of them grew older and made the jump up levels, joining the second-tier Huddinge IK and then the top-tier Djuragardens IF programs, both of which were located on the other side of the city, they also learned to get themselves to and from games and practices, with Tove usually alternating to pick up one of the three boys from school for hockey, leaving the other two siblings to return home, cook their own meals, and make the hour-and-a-half-long train and bus ride across the city to play by themselves. As Staffan made his way up the ranks, he got into the habit of doing his schoolwork on the nightly transit trips back from the rink, usually not arriving home until 10 pm.

“It was a tough time in our lives. We grew up early. We had to take responsibility. I’m sure Mom wasn’t happy with us travelling across the city at that young age but that was the drive we had. There was no way she could stop us. And she was very involved, she came when she could, but she couldn’t pick up three kids at the same time,” Staffan said. “We had to learn to group up ourselves.”

In the years after Hans’ sudden death, Niklas began to build a reputation as one of the best young hockey players in Sweden, trademarking early the open-ice hits that would later become a hallmark of his 15-year career with the Red Wings (a career that included eight seasons as Detroit’s assistant captain, an Olympic gold with Sweden in 2006, an Olympic captaincy in 2014, a world championships gold and MVP nod, and a 2008 Stanley Cup that made him a member of hockey’s illustrious Triple Gold Club). Things didn’t come quite as easily for Staffan and Mattias, though. When Niklas was made a first-round pick of the Red Wings in the 2000 NHL draft, Staffan, then 17, didn’t think he had any NHL prospects of his own.

The following season, when he entered what should have been his NHL draft year in 2000–01, neither he nor his agent made any attempt to get him selected or enter him into the draft. Though he played for the local state team and made his pro debut with Huddinge IK in Sweden’s low-level pro league, he went undrafted and had to that point never represented Sweden internationally.

A year after that, in 2001–02, Staffan played his first full season of pro hockey as a 19-year-old. He was also named to Sweden’s national team for the first time, representing his country at the 2002 World Juniors, held that year in Pardubice and Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic.

“It was very different for me and my brother because Nik was already a huge talent at a very young age. For me, I was a big body, and it took a lot of time for me to grow into it. I was pretty late in my development. It wasn’t until I was 18 years old basically where I really took a big step,” Staffan said.

Again, though, when the draft came, he didn’t expect to get picked or pay it any attention.

“Every kid growing up has a dream of playing in the NHL, but I didn’t think it was a reality. I thought it was too far away. Even when I made the world juniors, it was a huge stage but I never thought about it as a draft stage. I thought it was an honour to represent my country. And then a lot of things began to happen for me in that year,” Staffan said.

The 2002 draft, which was actually held in Toronto for just the second time at the then new Air Canada Centre, took place on June 22 and 23. Staffan didn’t learn that he’d been picked in its ninth round until June 24, a day after it was all over, when he got a phone call from Stockholm-based Leafs amateur scout Thommie Bergman.

“Hey, welcome to the team,” Bergman told Staffan.

“Oh wow, OK, I didn’t even know but thank you,” Staffan answered.

Bergman chuckled, telling Staffan they actually would have drafted him a year earlier had he opted in. Staffan laughed back, explaining to Bergman that he didn’t even know how it worked.

And that was it. Bergman told Staffan he wanted to send him a Leafs hat, they exchanged info, and they hung up the phone.

In his post-draft season, after a defenceman on Djurgardens IK was sidelined for four months with an injury in training camp, Staffan was given an audition in the Swedish Elite League, the country’s top flight, and played well enough in their preseason tournament to stick with the team. That year, on a team where Niklas had already established himself, Staffan played with his older brother for their lone season of hockey together before Niklas left for the NHL. But when the season was over, even after he was nominated for the Swedish Elite League’s rookie of the year award, Staffan’s perception of himself—and nonexistent NHL expectations—still hadn’t shifted. He didn’t really hear from the Leafs that season and recognized that he was still a long way away from entering their plans given where he was selected.

A few months later, though, in September 2003, the Leafs participated in the NHL Challenge, a weeklong training camp in Stockholm and Helsinki that included three preseason games, including one against Staffan’s—and then Leafs captain Mats Sundin’s—hometown club in Djurgarden. The camp, which Staffan knew he wouldn’t have been invited to had it been hosted as usual back in Toronto, gave Staffan his first opportunity to showcase himself for the Leafs brass in two of the three games. Though Staffan knew he stood no chance of making the stacked Leafs team, which was about to start its sixth consecutive season as a contender, he came away from the camp pleased with how he played and hopeful for the first time, a week after his 21st birthday, that he might someday be able to give the NHL a go.

“I always felt that I wasn’t going to make that phone call and say, ‘Hey, [Leafs general manager] John Ferguson, I’m ready to come and give it a chance,’” Staffan said. “I wanted them to show that they thought I was ready. I was lucky enough when they had training camp here because that gave me a very good chance to show who I was.”

After returning to Djurgardens for a second season in 2003–04 after the Leafs cut him and a third season in 2004–05 during the NHL’s season-long lockout, the Leafs signed Staffan and countryman Alex Steen, whom they picked in the first round of Staffan’s draft class in 2002, on August 9, 2005, inviting Staffan to Toronto for the first time.

Though he knew that he wasn’t going to make the Leafs out of camp and would have to start with the AHL’s Marlies, Staffan lucked out once more when his arrival in the fall of 2005 coincided with the Leafs’ AHL affiliate’s relocation from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Toronto’s Ricoh Coliseum. After playing his first seven professional games in North America under Marlies coach Paul Maurice, Staffan was recalled by Pat Quinn’s Leafs on October 29, 2005, making his NHL debut later that night against the Senators.

“I came over very prepared. I didn’t expect to make the NHL at all, but I was coming with the sense that I wanted to learn. I really wanted to develop. I thought it was scary. It was new. There was some big names on that team,” Staffan said. “I thought if I someday make the Leafs that will become a dream come true basically, but I saw it as more of an opportunity to become a better hockey player.”

Staffan spent most of the season playing on the Leafs’ third pairing, bouncing once to the AHL in December before returning and playing with the team through February. Between his debut at the end of October and a final demotion to the Marlies, where he finished the season and played into the AHL playoffs, Staffan got into 34 NHL games.

The following season, though, in the second and last year of his entry-level contract, he spent the full season with the Marlies, winning the team’s top defenceman award to earn a two-year contract extension.

Staffan bounced between the AHL and the NHL again in 2007–08, playing a 10-game stint with the Leafs in November and December and an eight-game run in March and April.

After failing to make the Leafs full-time once more in his fourth year with the team in 2008–09, Staffan played the first half of the season with the Marlies before he was claimed off re-entry waivers in February by the Capitals. In Washington, he played three more NHL games before finishing the season with their AHL affiliate, the Hershey Bears, leading the Bears to a Calder Cup title with 12 points in 21 playoff games to lead the AHL’s playoffs in scoring by a defenceman.

That off-season, though, the Capitals didn’t re-sign him and Staffan signed his third—and eventually final—NHL contract with the Flames, bouncing once more between the NHL and the AHL in 2009–10 and scoring his first and only NHL goal in an October 6 game between the Flames and the Canadiens.

After growing tired of the constant uncertainty and life as an injury-laden NHL defenceman, Kronwall decided to return home in 2010, ending his NHL career at 66 games played across three teams and five seasons. He signed the following year with Djurgardens and played a leading role, logging a team-high 22:50 per game and earning his first invite to Sweden’s senior men’s national team for the 2011 IIHF World Championship, where he won a silver medal.

He then signed in the KHL, moving to Russia to join Severstal Cherepovets. Early on in that first season in Russia, the hockey world was struck by a catastrophe when a charter flight carrying the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team to its season opener in Minsk crashed shortly after takeoff on September 7, 2011, killing 44 of the 45 people on board, including all the players on the team’s roster, four players from its junior level MHL team, and all three of the team’s coaches.

Just a few days before the crash, Staffan’s Severstal team had played its final preseason game in Yaroslavl against Lokomotiv. On the other side of the ice was Karlis Skrastins, who he’d played against twice in the NHL; Pavol Demitra, who he’d played against in his debut with the Flames; several others who he’d crossed paths with at various points in his career; and Swedish goaltender Stefan Liv, who he knew personally through years playing against him in the Swedish Elite League and Swedish junior ranks and with him in various capacities with the national team. (Liv was also quite close with Niklas because the two were both born in 1980, both drafted by the Red Wings in 2000, and Liv played the 2006–07 season in Detroit and Grand Rapids while Niklas was there.)

A few days after the crash, Cherepovets were among the several KHL teams to travel to Arena 2000, Yaroslavl’s home rink, for a mass memorial service local authorities said welcomed 100,000 people.

The scene at the arena stuck with Staffan, shaking him. He watched as the family members of those lost crowded around the coffins of their loved ones, their photos placed on top of their caskets laid out in rows, screaming and crying in the silence.

“It was…it was difficult,” he said, choking up between words more than a decade later. “It was a tough start to my life in the KHL. Seeing all of their families around the coffins in basically full panic mode, it hits you in a very real way. It’s so hard to put words into it actually because it was so surreal. They were hugging the coffins. It’s something I’ll never forget. Hockey is a small community and I played against a bunch of them. You’ve shaken their hands at several times. It still hits you even though the only guy I knew personally was Stefan Liv. I was in shock when it happened.”

Though the KHL resumed in the days after the crash with minute-long moments of silence before each game and Staffan finished the season with Severstal, playing in his second World Championship for Sweden that spring, he told himself throughout that year that if Lokomotiv were to eventually return to the KHL that he wanted to be a part of it.

When the KHL fulfilled its memorial service promise to bring pro hockey back to the city by relaunching the program in time for the 2012–13 season, Staffan followed through with his own promise to himself and was among the very first players to sign with the team.

“I felt like it was a calling to me, like this was something I needed to do,” he said.

In their first season back, he was named one of Yaroslavl’s assistant captains and later a KHL All-Star for the first of two times, helping Lokomotiv finish fourth in the KHL’s Western Conference with 22 points in 50 games, good for fourth on the team in scoring.

That May, in his third consecutive appearance for Sweden at the world championship, which was held jointly in Stockholm and Helsinki, Staffan was then named captain of the 2013 roster, leading them to a 3–2 upset win over a Canadian team that featured stars like Steven Stamkos and Claude Giroux, and eventually to the gold medal on home soil.

The win was, to that point, the highlight of his career.

“I felt like I won triple gold with that win because it was in my hometown, in my home arena, and I was captain for the team,” Staffan said. “It was a moment you’ll never forget when we were beating Canada with a superstar team in the quarters and winning that game. We felt like after that there was no way anyone was stopping us.”

In the years that followed, though, as Staffan continued to play prominent roles for Sweden internationally on teams filled with NHLers, the real joy of his career became his role with Lokomotiv. Yaroslavl became a second home of sorts, and he a staple of its team.

In 2015–16, his fourth season with the team, he was named Lokomotiv’s captain, a rare honour for a non-Russian player—one he says means more to him than twice captaining Sweden’s national team.

“This was a good Russian team that has a history of being a top team in the league and to have an import captain is something that’s never been heard of in one of those teams before. To be asked that by Russian coach [Alexei Kudashov] as well is something,” Staffan said. “I remember I told the coach, ‘Good luck with that because the president will never allow it.’ I had Tom Rowe, he was the first coach of the team, and he told me he wanted me as captain but the president would say there was no chance of that happening. And I was fine with that. I would act the same with a ‘C,’ or an ‘A,’ or nothing. But it wasn’t just coming from an import coach who liked an import player, it was coming from a Russian coach who had won in Russia. I was very proud to be asked that.”

Staffan went on to captain the team for five seasons. He retired in 2020 at the age of 37, after eight years with Lokomotiv and more than 900 pro games, when his body began to break down.

Lokomotiv quickly brought him on as a development coach, recruiter, and advisor to the head coach and president for the 2020–21 KHL season and beyond. Staff within the Lokomotiv organization talk about Staffan as a huge figure in their community and the history of their franchise.

At 9 pm local time on Valentine’s Day 2021, he is back home in the suburbs of Stockholm a day after making a late-night flight back from Lokomotiv, having just tucked his two sons, Maximillian, age seven, and Alexander, age four, into bed. When Lokomotiv asked him to stay on, he made sure that his arrangement with the team allowed him to live at home because it was important to him that his oldest son, who was starting his first year of school, be educated in Sweden.

Though he never made it as a full-time NHL player, he has fond memories of his three seasons in Toronto. He credits Sundin for his mentorship of the team’s Swedes and considers Steen a good friend to this day. He knew then that the odds weren’t in his favour, so he doesn’t hold any resentment, and insists Maurice, Quinn, and Ferguson all treated him well.

“[Steen] came the same year and he was a big prospect, the first-rounder, and I was, you know, I was picked in the very last round. So we were at a different spot. He knew he was going to get his chance and I knew that I was going to have to really prove myself because everyone knows it’s a lot of politics in the game of hockey, especially over there. So I knew I had an uphill climb,” Staffan said. “It’s funny how you kind of take different paths. I was extremely happy to do the things I did in North America, but I felt like whenever I was close I got a big injury that sent me back and I got tired of that up and down. I felt I needed a change and when I went back to Europe, I felt I took another step.”

He’s thankful that when he made the jump it was to Toronto and not St. John’s. He remembers fondly his apartment at 10 Queens Quay, just across from the Westin Harbour Castle Hotel on Lake Ontario, and less fondly the criticism he received from Leafs fans during a tumultuous time in the organization’s history on his 500-metre walks to the Air Canada Centre.

“To be in the AHL and the NHL in the same city in Toronto, which is one of the best, coolest cities in the world, I was really fortunate to have that opportunity and it made it not a difficult decision to come. But we had a bad stretch and people were saying how bad we were when I walked to the rink, so I started driving,” Staffan said, laughing. “I felt I didn’t need all that mouth rolling. It was such a great experience because of how everyone is involved in the team and what’s going on, but I was the sixth defenceman when I was up, I didn’t play any big minutes or special teams, I was basically filling in when someone was injured, yet people recognized someone from the Leafs and they weren’t happy with the team’s results.”

The best years of his career were in Yaroslavl, though. In the prime of his career with Lokomotiv, he was offered several one-way contracts to return to the NHL.

He turned them each down.

“I felt like I wasn’t ready,” he said of the timing of each of those offers. “I was considered a big player in the KHL at the time, and I wasn’t ready to come back and be on a one-way contract, which meant at that time that there were several one-way contracts in the minors. I wasn’t ready to go there to play 8 to 10 minutes as a No. 6–7 defenceman or sit and eat popcorn in the stands. I really wanted to contribute, and I felt I did that in the KHL.”

Though his career never looked like his big brother’s, he’s proud of the one he made for himself.

“I think Nik was a very intelligent hockey player. He was known for his big hits, but he was a heck of a player. You don’t play a decade and a half in the NHL as a top-four defenceman unless you’re a good player. But I believe we played different. He was throwing bigger hits and he was a good skater. I played I think when I moved to the KHL more of a skilled hockey than he was. I was pointing the power play and I didn’t have a big shot, but I knew how to play to set up my teammates,” Staffan said proudly.

On top of his role with Lokomotiv, he’s also now a TV analyst on Saturdays for the league he used to play in, now called the Swedish Hockey League. In both jobs, he has begun to look at the game—and the late-round NHL prospects who are now trying to carve out a career path of their own—through a different lens.

“I see a lot of players coming up that are very much alike. They’re all steeped in the same form so to speak,” Staffan said. “I feel like I’ve always analyzed the game and I think in Sweden there’s a lot of small details that they still haven’t caught up with. It’s ‘this stick is pointed the wrong way, he needs to take this angle.’ Small details make a huge difference in the game of hockey these days because it’s so fast.”

And even as the talent of the players he works with in Russia and dissects in Sweden rises, Staffan wants to impart lessons learned from his career, and that flooded soccer field with Nik, on a future generation of draft hopefuls.

“The one thing in Sweden that I think lacks is actually the game of hockey. I feel like the hockey sense has almost become lower. Every kid has a shooting ramp, a skating coach, and a skills coach. They can do all of these cool tricks. But when I was growing up and when I was a kid, all I wanted to do was play. I never had a shooting ramp. I was playing one-on-one against my brothers, and we were always fighting and I was always bigger and stronger than Nik but he was better than me,” Staffan said. “You learn a lot from that. You learn how to protect the puck, the balance, where to place the puck so that he can’t reach it, and so on. I don’t see that nowadays from kids. I see a lot of individual skill. I hope to help fill in the gaps. I hope to be a part of what comes next.”