Toronto Maple Leafs legend Mats Sundin has been making the media rounds of late, hawking his new book and pulling back the curtain on his life on and off the ice. But Sundin’s reappearance on the hockey scene brings to mind a question – where does Sundin rank in terms of all-time Leafs greats?

The answer may surprise a few observers, but from this writer’s perspective, Sundin isn’t among the top five Leafs players. In fact, we wouldn’t put him in the top 10 of Leafs players anymore. Why? Well, let’s take a look at Toronto’s history and identify which stars rank ahead of Sundin.

At the very top of our list is current Leafs captain Auston Matthews. The 27-year-old hasn’t achieved much in terms of Stanley Cup playoff success, but neither did Sundin. And Matthews’ pinpoint accuracy as the NHL’s current most naturally skilled scorer makes him more dangerous than Sundin was. That’s for starters.

After that, we’d go with dominant Leafs players of previous generations – Dave Keon, Syl Apps, Teeder Kennedy, Frank Mahovlich, Charlie Conacher, Johnny Bower and Tim Horton. You can mix up those names in just about any order you like, but all of those players won at least one Stanley Cup, which is one more than Sundin won – not that it was Sundin’s fault, of course, but in a business where winning matters, those aforementioned players get the nod ahead of Sundin because they were able to do what Sundin couldn’t.

Rounding out this writer’s top 10 Leafs are two other superstars of their era – Darryl Sittler and Borje Salming. Sittler was the heart and soul of Toronto’s roster for much of the 1970s, while Salming was a workhorse and pioneer for European players. Putting them ahead of Sundin isn’t a comment about Sundin’s impact on his generation, but rather, an underscoring of the imprint Sittler and Salming had, despite the best – or worst – intentions of former owner Harold Ballard.

Sundin factors in after that, alongside Doug Gilmour, Turk Broda and George Armstrong. Again, this isn’t a slight to Sundin, but instead, an acknowledgment that in different eras, those players had a similarly terrific effect on their respective Leafs teams.

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You can give Sundin his due for overcoming some sub-par Leafs teams last century while at the same time not giving him the laurels of the players we’ve ranked ahead of him. Any Original Six franchise is going to have a slew of greats, and in some instances, comparing one star to another from a different time and place isn’t completely fair to everyone involved. However, it’s safe to say Sundin – who is one of the greatest Swedish players ever to play at the highest levels – should be recognized as an all-time great, but not the all-time greatest.

It’s good to see Sundin stepping back into the spotlight to give his own perspective on what he was able to achieve in Toronto. New generations would serve themselves well by going back and watching Sundin work his particular brand of magic. But those kind vibes shouldn’t overwhelm our critical senses. A fair appraisal of Sundin’s imprint shows he was one of the better Leafs players of his time but not a top-10 great in franchise history.

As Wayne Gretzky has said many times, you’re ultimately judged as an elite hockey player by how many Cups you’ve won, and unfortunately for Sundin, he never could carry his Leafs teams to a Cup win, let alone a Cup final. If he had done better from a team perspective, it would be easy to put him in the top 10 Leafs of all time. But that’s not how it worked out, and that’s reflected in our opinion of this ranking.

Let’s celebrate who Sundin is, without over-inflating his importance in Leafs history. He’s up there near the top of the mountain in Toronto, but he wasn’t able to get to its peak. And that’s as fair as we can be to him.

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