The 2015 NHL Entry Draft will always be remembered as the Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel class. But what’s become increasingly apparent is how many quality players filled out the first few rounds of an impressive draft class.

One team that appears to have benefited from the depth of talent is the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Leafs held the fourth-overall pick in 2015, and used it to select scoring phenom Mitch Marner from the Ontario Hockey League’s London Knights.

Marner is still rounding out as a player, but so far it’s pretty tough to argue with the selection. His rookie year saw a 19-goal, 61-point season. This year hasn’t been as strong, but he’s still on pace for 15 goals and 55 points. That would be two seasons in a row where Marner – still not 21 years of age – has scored like a top-six forward. So far, so good.

Second-round picks tend to draw substantially less fanfare than their predecessors, and that was certainly the case for defenceman Travis Dermott. While Marner made an instantaneous jump from OHL competition to the NHL, the Leafs preferred to develop Dermott with the AHL Toronto Marlies. Those 88 games saw him earn a constantly increasing role, building up to the point where Mike Babcock and company had little choice but to call him up for NHL action.

Dermott is a fascinating player. Ten years ago, I’m not sure he gets a chance this fast. He’s listed at 5-foot-11 and 180 pounds – undersized by any measure. But what he lacks in height and weight he makes up for elsewhere.

He’s one of the more mobile defenders in the league and possesses a unique ability to transition the puck up ice with ease. And while he’s not going to be the guy you drop late into a close game to shut down the opposition’s most physical and ferocious attackers, he is a player you can reasonably rely on to relieve defensive zone pressure and generate heaps of offence.

It’s fair to say Dermott has been something of a blessing for the Leafs this year, and for a multitude of reasons. There is no one in the organization who would point to their current blueline as an organizational strength – the team for a couple of years now has exhausted a bunch of internal options and has routinely sniffed around the top-four trade market. And while Dermott won’t be the solution for what ails Toronto in the defensive zone, the team has definitively played better with him in the lineup.

One thing that I always look at when a defender gets inserted into the lineup for a period of time is on-ice versus off-ice performance. The theory is that if a defenceman is truly driving his team’s performance in the right direction, his team’s numbers should spike when he is on the ice.

The great part about Dermott – even in limited action – is that he has played in a variety of situations and with four different partners in Roman Polak, Connor Carrick, Justin Holl, and Jake Gardiner. Combine that with pretty decent minutes (he’s averaging more than 16 a night), and you have a situation where his impact on performance should be easily measurable.

Since his call-up in January, Toronto’s numbers have improved across the board. A look at the shots, scoring chances, and goals with Dermott on and off the ice drives home this point:

Those are pretty big variances – variances that certainly speak encouragingly about Dermott’s impact. The goal numbers are going to be a bit volatile over just 13 games, but the fact that Toronto has seen a goal share of 80 per cent with Dermott on the ice is still pretty impressive, especially considering that the team – in the midst of a roll – is getting about 65 per cent of the goals with him on the bench.

The goal and scoring chance numbers, just due to the larger sample size, are where I leave impressed. In both instances Toronto is about five percentage points better by either measure. That’s noteworthy for a couple of reasons. One, as I mentioned earlier, Dermott’s played with everyone from Gardiner to Polak, so it’s not as if he’s leaned heavily on a partner to carry his 5-on-5 performance. Two, it starts to dispel the notion that an undersized defender needs to be protected or insulated. Either Dermott isn’t the risk people thought he’d be defensively due to his size, or he’s so much better offensively that he overwhelms any potential defensive concerns, or it’s a combination of the two.

One last thought to chew on for Leafs fans: Dermott has obviously been a pleasant surprise for the team. So much so you have to start wonder if he’ll eat into others’ minutes in short order. Guys like Ron Hainsey and Polak are short-term options only and could see their minutes slide at any point. Nikita Zaitsev, who the Leafs committed to in a big way last summer, was underwhelming prior to an extended injury. If you are Dermott, there might not be a better team to play for right now. The opportunity is there in a big way.

Now, we’ll just have to see if he seizes it.