Hockey Trade Rumors

Start spreading the news, Toronto. The Maple Leafs are built to make the playoffs. The Leafs are a young, defense first team, which is exactly what everyone said we needed to become while Pat Quinn was coach and general manager of the NHL’s most popular franchise. Wait? Now it’s different? Now it’s speed and offense? Well God dammit.
Here’s a fun fact about the Toronto Maple Leafs. You know all those cliches like “build through the draft” and “defense wins championships”? In hockey, everyone decides that the cliches they’ll use are pretty much the opposite of whatever the Toronto Maple Leafs are doing at the time. If the Leafs are old, they need youth, if the Leafs are young, they need experience. If the Leafs are tough then good hockey is wrong, and skill wins out, and if they’re skilled, they’re soft and small.

The Toronto media does it too. I’ve e-mailed Howard Berger on several occasions, and only on one of those occasions did I not get a response. Berger, the day before, had written that he knew signing Blake would be a mistake, and said so all along. Along with a link to that post, I linked him to a post where he mentioned that Jason Blake would be the perfect acquisition for the Maple Leafs, as opposed to going after Ryan Smyth or Chris Drury.

The ammusing thing is, Jason Blake’s contract is seen as a huge bust, but he scored 25 goals and 63 points last year. Considering the deals that players who have been much worse got that same day, including Scott Gomez ($7 million), Chris Drury ($7 million), Daniel Briere ($6.5 million), Ryan Smyth ($6.5 million), Scott Hannan ($4.5 million), and Paul Kariya ($6 million), I’d say that production for Jason Blake’s $4 million a year is a pretty good return.

Yes, the Toronto Maple Leafs have been bad since the NHL lockout. Yes, they haven’t won the Stanley Cup in 42 years, and are in the midst of their darkest period in franchise history, but like the old argument “Hitler believed in gun control and abortion”, it gets tiresum listening to people assume that everything a failed franchise does is wrong.

Has it occurred to people that sometimes the Toronto Maple Leafs just came up short?

In 1993, they were a pretty good team. Well built. They didn’t win, but how many teams did? And the same goes for 1994, 1999, 2002, 2004, 1978, and several other years. This team has only missed the playoffs more than two consecutive years once. Is the team that poorly managed? Or has it just never been great?

The fact is, the Maple Leafs are targets because of their fan base. Sure, the Bruins haven’t won since 1972, and the Blackhawks haven’t since 1961, and yeah, the Red Wings went 45 years without a Cup, and the Rangers went 54, and it’s true, that several 35 year old (and older) franchises, including the St Louis Blues, Vancouver Canucks, Los Angeles Kings, and Buffalo Sabres have never won the Cup, but we forget those, because the Leafs have the large, annoying fan base.

To hear people put the Tampa Bay Lightning ahead of the Maple Leafs in their standings predictions is obnoxious. Sure, the Lightning added Victor “was JT’s ***** at the World Juniors” Hedman, Kurtis Foster, and Mattias Ohlund, but does that help their defense as much as Mike Komisarek, Francois Beauchemin, and Garnet Exelby help ours. To go further, the Toronto team will be facing fewer cheap shots because of the toughness brought in by Colton Orr and Mike Komisarek. Hell, unless your name is Milan Lucic, you’ll be scared shitless to go near our players, and if your name IS Milan Lucic, we’ll hurry up and bend over right away, because you’re the *****ing man.

Then I hear “yeah, but Toronto can’t score”. With injuries to Nik Hagman and Tomas Kaberle at parts of the season, the Leafs still finished 10th in the NHL, 40 goals ahead of the 25th place Tampa Bay Lightning. Yes, the Leafs lost Nik Antropov and Dominic Moore, but Moore certainly proved to be a product of Jason Blake, and the Lightning also lost Prospal and Recchi. Even if you account for Lecavalier getting back into form, and Steven Stamkos developing (by the way, not sure if I’ve said it here yet, but 100 points, guaranteed, I love him), that’s just as big a what-if as the continuing development of Nikolai Kulemin, Matt Stajan, Mikhail Grabovski, Christian Hanson, and Tyler Bozak, as well as several other Leafs.

Everything we’ve been criticized for over the last ten years, including being old, slow, and bad defensively, we’ve improved and changed. Hell, you certainly can’t accuse the Leafs of relying entirely on their goaltending anymore, that’s for sure.

But the Leaf haters will continue. They’ll keep chanting 1967, and they’ll keep forgetting that they’re talking about the franchise with the most Hockey Hall of Famers, and second most Stanley Cups, and the Leafs will keep winning games, and find their way to the post-season.

And Leaf haters? Beware. We’ve got an ass load of cap space reserved for next July 1st. We’re not even close to done getting better.

-L