The Maple Leafs Rookie Roster

On Saturday, the Toronto Maple Leafs rookie roster will have their first practice together before they host their own rookie tournament against the Blackhawks, Penguins and Senators in London, ON.

There isn't much room in net or on the blueline for any of these prospects for the Leafs, but the forwards will be playing for some spots in normal training camp and then onto the roster.  With Fredrik Sjostrom injured early, there is upwards of three spots open through training camp and into the regular season and on this rookie roster, I think we see a few more than three guys with a solid shot from this point on.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Phil Kessel	Tomas Kaberle	Jonas Gustavsson
Kris Versteeg	Dion Phaneuf	J-S Giguere
Nikolai Kulemin	Francois Beauchemin
Clarke MacArthur	Luke Schenn
Mikhail Grabovski	Carl Gunnarsson
Colby Armstrong	Jeff Finger
Tyler Bozak	Brett Lebda
Fredrik Sjostrom	Mike Komisarek
Mike Brown
Colton Orr
Sam Carrick	Keith Aulie	Andrew Engelage
Andrew Crescenzi	Jesse Blacker	Jussi Rynnas
Jerry D'Amigo	Erik Bugdoerfer	Ben Scrivens
Jamie Devane	Dave Cowan
Brayden Irwin	Marc-Andre Durion
Nazem Kadri	Simon Gysbers
Mike Liambas	Korbinian Holzer
Greg McKegg	Dallas Jackson
Dale Mitchell	Drew Paris
Marcel Mueller	Barron Smith
Josh Nicholls
Sondre Olden
Bradley Ross
Kenny Ryan
Mikhail Stefanovich

From here, my three favourites to make the biggest splash from this camp include Nazem Kadri, Brayden Irwin and Dale Mitchell, with Jerry D'Amigo and Mikhail Stefanovich bringing up the dark horses.  There are some future blueliners at this camp looking to raise an eyebrow or two, since injuries are definitely part of the game and keeps everything from being written in stone for the whole year.  Keith Aulie is a definite favourite, as is Korbinian Holzer.  I don't think I'll be looking for many outside shots for the hockey pool there though.