Mitch Marner is smaller than your typical No. 1 centre. But he’s skilled. And tenacious. And fast. And he plays at both ends of the rink. And he wears No. 93.

Sound familiar?

“He’s got a little bit of Doug Gilmour in him,” said Dan Marr, the chief scout for the NHL’s Central Scouting bureau. “Nothing you do is going to stop him from going out there to do what he can do.

“After Connor (McDavid), Mitch might be the most skilled player in the draft. Similar to Connor, it’s just the quickness in which he can process the game and execute plays. That really stands out in his favour.

“But then he’s got that durability and that grit level in him.”

The Maple Leafs will pick fourth overall in June in one of the better, deeper drafts in a decade.

Marner, a forward with the London Knights, grew up in Thornhill watching the Leafs. He has said it would be a dream come true to play for the Maple Leafs. It may well come to pass. The NHL rates Marner as the sixth- best skater in North America (behind McDavid, Jack Eichel, Noah Hanifin, Dylan Strome and Lawson Crouse).

But because of his links to director of player personnel Mark Hunter, who co-owns and used to run the Knights, Marner may be better regarded by the Leafs than by other teams.

“He can shoot, but he also can pass. That makes him unique,” said London Knights co-owner and coach Dale Hunter, Mark’s brother. “I like his speed, his hockey sense, his scoring. He cares about winning and losing. He’ll block shots. He’s a special player that way.

“As far as his own end, he understands the game well enough that he can use his brain to figure out coverage against bigger guys.”

Bigger guys. The knock on Marner is that he is small: five-foot-11, 160 pounds.

“He’s slight,” Marr said. “That doesn’t necessarily preclude him from playing centre. That’s something that will be determined a couple of years from now. It certainly doesn’t impact his game because of his quickness and his smarts. He’s an elusive quick player.

“I don’t think he’s got any real holes to his game. The one thing with Mitch Marner, he’s a hard worker. He’s first up the ice, first one on the puck, but he’ll also be one the first coming back. Checking is just staying with your man. Mitch can check.”

And if the Leafs need a centre, Marner may not be the guy. He may be more a winger at the NHL level. He played a lot on the wing for the Knights this season, until the end of the year and into the playoffs.

But he can score. He finished second to Strome (and ahead of McDavid) in the OHL scoring race with 44 goals and 82 assists in 63 regular-season games. He had 17 points in nine playoff games before the Knights bowed out to Erie.

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“He has a chance to be a superstar,” said Mark Seidel, chief scout for North American Central Scouting. “He has incredible vision and ability to find teammates in traffic with pinpoint passes. And playing for Dale Hunter has been very good for him as he has a strong base on which to build.”

That is one thing Marner has going for him. The Knights are run like an NHL team and top-end players who were under the Hunter Brothers’ tutelage include Patrick Kane, Sam Gagner, Olli Maatta, Bo Horvat, Nazem Kadri and John Tavares.

“We try to be as professional as possible,” Dale Hunter said. “We try to give them everything they need. We make them play both ends of the ice. We try to get them ready off the ice: weights, nutrition. But they have to play both ends. Mitch does. That’s important for the next level.”

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