The Maple Leafs’ 5th-Round Pick Who Might Be Worth Watching

There’s something kind of fun about a fifth-round draft pick who keeps producing the same way, year after year. No giant numbers. No ridiculous scoring totals. Just a kid who keeps showing up and doing his job. That’s Cooper Williams.

The Maple Leafs grabbed Williams 158th overall in the 2026 draft, and at first glance he doesn’t look like the sort of player who gets people terribly excited. He’s 6-foot-1, but still skinny at around 163 to 165 pounds. He’s a left-shot centre from Calgary who has played the last two seasons with the Saskatoon Blades.

But then you look a little closer. Williams put up exactly 57 points in each of his first two WHL seasons. He scored 21 goals as a 16-year-old rookie and 23 the following year. That’s pretty impressive consistency for a young centre, particularly one who isn’t simply hanging around the offensive zone waiting for somebody else to do the dirty work.

Williams plays a pretty good 200-foot game. He wins faceoffs, supports the puck down low, makes the sensible north-south play and seems to have a pretty good idea of where the game is going before it gets there. That last part is probably what makes him interesting.

Craig Button had Williams ranked higher than Central Scouting.

Craig Button had Williams ranked 31st overall heading into the draft. Central Scouting had him around 50th among North American skaters. So when the Maple Leafs got him at 158, there was at least a pretty big gap between where one respected evaluator saw him and where he was eventually selected.

That doesn’t mean the Maple Leafs found a first-rounder in the fifth round. Hockey doesn’t work quite that neatly. It does mean, however, that there’s something to watch. Williams has soft hands and the hockey sense to make passes through traffic. He also anticipates plays well enough to break things up in the neutral zone. Those are useful qualities in a centre, and they tend to become even more useful as the competition gets better.

Williams will spend another season in juniors, then head to NCAA hockey.

He’ll spend another season with Saskatoon before heading to the University of North Dakota for 2027-28. So there’s no rush here. He has time to put some weight on that skinny frame and keep developing his game. And that might be the most interesting part of Williams.

Nobody is expecting Super Cooper to walk into Toronto anytime soon. But if the body catches up with the brain and the hands, this could be one of those fifth-round picks who quietly keeps moving up the prospect list. Sometimes that’s how the good ones sneak up on you.

[a note of thanks to Stan Smith for his insights on this post]