InfinityOakville

Welcome to Vintage Leaf Memories

Vintage Leaf Memories has evolved since its launch in September of 2009. VLM began as a site almost exclusively about my memories as a Maple Leaf fan growing up in Ontario in the 1950s and into the ‘60s and ‘70s. I was born in 1953, and it was a golden era to grow up a Leaf fan, given their tremendous success under Punch Imlach in the 1960s.

While I’ve received wonderful feedback about my stories from those olden days, readers also seem to enjoy discussing the current Leaf situation. With that in mind, I look to provide a mix of old stories, memories and commentary on current Leaf topics as well.

I hope that the site will continue to grow! Thanks to everyone for their feedback.

1962 Leaf Calendar



In the fall of 1962, when I had just turned 9, I sent for and received the Leafs annual calendar. The 1962-’63 edition remains my favorite as it features a picture of the 1961-’62 Cup winning team on the front.
Thursday, March 15, 2012

10 issues the Leafs face going forward, despite a win in Tampa Bay

The most heartwarming aspect of the win in Tampa Bay had to be Reimer’s performance. (Some of you will recall that, after the last Leaf game, another loss, I posted here saying I was confident that Reimer would rebound next season.  Can I be called a prophet—for one night, at least?)  It’s just good to see the young man excel.  He deserves any success that comes his way, including at the tail end of a difficult season.

There were other hopeful signs as the Leafs broke off their skid, but I’m guessing some fans will be torn between being pleased about a nice win and wondering if it will damage the now much-discussed hopes of landing a big fish on draft-day in  June.

In any event, a win always feels better than a loss.

****

Especially in this market, there is forever the tendency to over-analyze everything that happens with the Maple Leaf hockey club.  And I don’t mean just the “big picture” stuff.  I refer as much to the tiniest little things that happen game-to-game and even shift to shift.

A defenseman gives the puck away, we see it and have an instantaneous reaction.  At the very least, we are upset; at worst, we want the guy traded; Chances are a few disgruntled fans will look at some kind of “advanced stat” to prove the guy is lousy because, well, he plays almost all of his minutes on the right hand side of the ice (or is it the left?) when the puck is faced-off in the offensive zone and that proves that…..whatever they want it to prove.  Usually, that the guy is a bum.
My point is simply this:  when I was a kid following the game 50 years ago, fans noticed mistakes, of course.  (Eddie Shack, for example, used to drive me crazy.  I often complained about Eddie Shack to my Dad—who couldn’t have cared less, he was a Montreal fan—quite regularly, demanding that Shack be traded, as though Dad had some influence with then Leaf General Manager and Coach Punch Imlach. I guess Shack made too many "mistakes" for my liking at the time. Having said that, Eddie was indeed an "Entertainer"- check out the great old early '60s photo at right of Shack in action and up in the air against the Bruins at the Gardens...)

Back then, a fan might especially notice an individual player’s “faux pas” if, say,  they were at the game in person at Maple Leaf Gardens.  Or, fans maybe happened to see the game on TV (the parts that were actually telecast; they did not televise entire games in those days) and noticed a give-away via the TV screen.  They perhaps read a newspaper write-up the next day and if the beat reporter was in a particularly specific mood, he may cite a particular error an individual player might have made.

But to state the obvious, it was nowhere near what we have today, and I include myself as part of the modern-day reality, and maybe even part of the “problem”.  Every game is on TV, starting with pre-season.  We not only know what the big team is doing, we know what every guy on the Marlies is playing like.  We have replay after replay of every little miscue.  We have the Pierre McGuire’s of the world yelling in our ear about match-ups, bad plays, providing more breathless observations than we could ever possibly need.

Daily, we hear and see dozens of “analysts” on television and radio—24 hours a day. Throw in the newspapers (they still exist, it seems) and all the online and blog reporting, and well, it can be overwhelming just to say “current”.  Imagine coaching or playing in this market.  It’s no doubt pretty neat when things are going well—but not so much when the Leafs are going through what they have gone through these last few weeks, until the victory in Tampa.

By the way, this is not to excuse the mess the Leafs find themselves in, or how they got here.  Simply to acknowledge that we are all (albeit an awfully tiny part) a part of the Leafland syndrome, which sometimes appears to become a self-fulfilling prophecy:  having seen the disastrous end to this movie, in one form or another for the past 45 years, we assume that if anything can go wrong, it will.  We think the team may, for example, be good enough to make the playoffs, but fret that, if they go into a slump, they won’t make it.  Before you know it, when they do get into that slump—early-season, mid-season or late-season—the whole thing becomes like a vortex that they can’t get out of—until it’s too late, yet again.

It’s not the fans, or the media, that causes this, no.  But everyone is a kind of an un-intended co-conspirator.

All this said, standing still is rarely, if ever, an option for an NHL General Manager, even if you are coming off a season where you win the Stanley Cup.  But no one in the situation the Leafs find themselves in can afford to just wait for something good to happen.  They need to address certain issues, make changes- and move forward.

Now, there are no doubt all kinds of things the Burke and his people will be looking at this spring and summer.  We know he already has a coach in place.  I am assuming he likes his scouting staff so we won’t see changes there before the draft.  No, this is all about the on-ice product now (goodness knows we don’t need another “voice” in the front office, eh?) and what management will do to either “fix” the problems, or, putting things more positively, enhance the team’s present roster by plugging in certain apparent holes.

We all have our opinions—and here are a few things that, from my perspective, need to be addressed between now and September:
  1. The leadership void.  Sure Lupul helped, and Phaneuf wears the “C”, but it’s hard to miss the fact that this team has seemed rudderless through its recent doldrums.
  2. A strong veteran presence—and preferably more than just one player.  We keep hearing the Leafs are so young and so talented.  Well, they’re young.  And that’s a good thing—in a way.  But while a team with speed is nice, unless you have somebody who has “been there”, it’s hard to envision this group becoming a Cup contender, even if the young kids mature as hoped.
  3. Much better center-ice play.  I’m not going to debate (though I welcome your views) whether Grabovski is a first-line center or not.  At this point I barely care.  He’s one decent center on a team that, it if really wants to compete at the “elite” level, needs at least two more.  Someone better, the same, not quite as good as Grabbo, again, I don’t necessarily care.  But we need three NHL centers-  right now.
  4. A really, really, really good defenseman.  Call him a shutdown defenseman, a game-changer, a hard-nosed guy, whatever.  We have lots of defensemen at the moment.  That's good. And we have lots of depth on the blue line.  That's nice, too.  What we don’t seem to have, unless I’m watching the wrong team, is a guy that is more than just reputation or potential.  Gardiner has all that potential and should be pretty darn good (witness the great individual effort on his goal against the Lightning Thursday night).  But Phaneuf, for all the talk from the brass of him being the best defensemen in the league in the first two weeks of the season (we should never, ever listen to anything anyone says in the first month of the season—it invariably means zilch…) is still more reputation than consistent excellence.  Komisarek (and I’ve tried to pump his tires for three seasons) has been consistently just OK.  Fairly or not, half the free world wants Schenn traded.  Franson evidently is not Carlyle’s kind of player (though he finally got into the line-up against Tampa and acquired himself just fine).  And even Gunnersson at times looks like he is caught in a maze lately, not knowing what just happened.
  5. Another top scorer.  I’ve never quite understood the notion that “well, we already have Kessel, we can’t have another player like him….”.  I’m not suggesting we hire another one-way, one-dimensional player that only scores goals, but there would probably be worse things.  We definitely need another guy who can score, besides Lupul and Kessel.  What happens if Kessel gets hurt?
  6. You probably wondered how long I would go before I cited goaltending.  Hey, as I’ve said often here, I like both guys.  I always wanted Gustavsson to get a shot at playing a string of games in a row and when he has, he has largely played pretty well.  Reimer has not been himself but could be by next season.  (The shutout in Tampa bodes well, maybe?)  Still, it is difficult to picture a scenario where Burke brings both goalies back and starts with the exact same goaltending duo next fall, considering what the team has gone through this season.  A veteran goalie?  I see no one that excites me in free-agency, which means a trade.  But I couldn’t tell you who we should get.
  7. As I posted here a while back, where will the Carlyle-Kessel relationship go?  Management will have us believe all is well, that Carlyle is just making a small tweak to Phil’s game.  The fact that Kessel is playing less at times while Grabovski’s group takes first line minutes should not escape our attention.  Not that the first two weeks of the Carlyle era indicates any long-term certainty when it comes to future decisions, but I need to be convinced the two—the newly-signed coach and the team’s most talented and explosive player—can get along without it being a distraction.
  8. While I recognize that there is still a very strong base of support for Burke and company, and much belief in his “vision”, there is also the risk of heightened fan fall-out if things don’t get significantly better.  The fan base has put a great deal of trust in Burke.  He was the “chosen one”, the guy who was going to return the Leafs to prominence.  So far, they have not, bottom line, done any better than during the Ferguson regime (though surely this is a better team), and have had nowhere near the level of success experienced through the Quinn era.  Goodwill only lasts so long.
  9. Can the Leafs help players—specifically individuals like Schenn, Reimer, Armstrong, Komisarek, Connolly, Liles and Franson—regain their at-times lost confidence?  Each of those guys is NHL players, but it feels like each of them has regressed badly this season.  Does Carlyle have the approach to make each of those players be what they can and should be?  Or will they be moved out, instead?
  10. Will all those fine young prospects down on the farm (Kadri, Colborne, et al) be solid NHL’ers come October—or still just “prospects”?
There is much, much more, I realize, that we can discuss.  But I’m leaving that up to you.

Send your thoughts along…

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Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Nikolai Kulemin: wait until next season

It finally hit me on the weekend, while watching Nikolai Kulemin do everything but actually put the put into the opposing net:  I’ve seen this move before, albeit in a much different (and not necessarily comparable, I realize) time and place.

Before I get into the specifics with regard to that reference, here is my perspective on Kulemin: as I've said before, he was on a very nice career arc heading into this season.  We all saw the improving point totals and increasing responsibility under Ron Wilson.  He meshed well with Mikhail Grabovski—especially so when Clarke McArthur joined the line a season ago.

Whatever has held him back this season (the KHL tragedy, contract thoughts, being on the trading block, lost confidence, etc.) he has not been the same guy we were used to seeing.  Oh, he still plays pretty hard, goes to the right spots, doesn’t “hurt” the team, generally speaking, with his defensive play.  And, a bit amazingly, he’s a “plus” player despite his minuscule goal totals.

But even I, who have been a big Kuli booster the last three seasons as he has matured as a player, will not try to claim he’s still playing great.  Setting aside the obvious offensive woes, one play the other night was a reflection of the less than stellar year he is having:  he was back near and around his own goalie's crease (I believe this was during the Washington game) but essentially stood there, not doing much of anything, as the other team scored.  So, he was in the "right" place, but a lack of that difference-making "extra effort" was at least partially responsible for a back-breaking goal in a close game.

Throw in that I don’t think he’s a physical as he can and should be, and I’m sorry, 7 goals or whatever is not good enough for a second-line winger.  An off-year this season would have been, say, 15 goals—and he’ll have to peddle like heck these last 12 games to even get there.  It's pretty unlikely.

But 7 or 8 goals?  No, even if you're Bob Gainey—the best defensive forward in the game for a decade in the 1970s and '80s—that’s not nearly enough.  But my thought is a hopeful one:  that this is an aberration.  I think Kulemin will bounce back with a much more productive year in 2012-’13.

What makes me think so?  Well, he has too much skill and he’s way too smart a player for him to suddenly become a perennial 10-goal scorer in the NHL.  I don’t see him going the road of Scott Gomez or Jonathan Cheecho, two fine players who were premier offensive talents for a time but saw the wheels seemingly fall off their games very suddenly.

Sometimes, for reasons we just don’t understand, these kinds of 'one-off' seasons happen.  I’m sure we can all cite NHL’ers that this has happened to in more current times.  But for me, an example I harken back to involves a favorite old 1960s Leaf of mine, Dave Keon.


Through Keon’s first seven years in the NHL in the early 1960s he was one of the best all-around players in the game.  A brilliant skater, he was a diligent forechecker and a fine penalty-killer who always scored 20 or more goals a season when that was a key benchmark in the old "Original Six" NHL.

Suddenly, something clicked “off” in the first year of expansion in 1967-‘68, and Keon (left) could not buy a goal.  Even though the Leafs were playing lesser opposition (by far) than in the old 6-game NHL, Keon could only manage 11 goals in the newly-expanded 74-game schedule.  I remember him being quoted after the season as saying that he was “standing still” too much that season and never really got his game going consistently.  He bounced back with three great seasons over the next few years, scoring 27, 32 and then 38 goals.  He was an-end-of-season NHL All-Star (second team) at the end of the 1970-’71 season.  (One quick aside:  ironically, in terms of assists, Keon had his best year, to that point in his career, in  that terrible 1967-’78, earning a total of 37 assists—and he was a “plus” player, just like Kulemin is now.  Stan Mikita, the tremendous Chicago center on the famous “Scooter Line”, led the NHL that season with 97 points but was a “minus” player.  Go figure…)

Interestingly, Kulemin still could end up with a career high in assists this season, his fourth in the NHL. (He had 27 last year, 21 so far this season.)  Whether last season’s 30-goal breakout year was an aberration, I don’t know.   He scored 15 and 16 in his first two seasons.  He turns 26 this summer.  He should be in his prime.

I’m a bit frustrated with his play this season, but plenty of guys go through this, for all kinds of seasons. I think he is capable of being a big, physical winger who can eat up minutes under Carlyle.  I see him as a guy who can score 25 goals a season—sometimes more, sometimes less.  He should be a prototypical Burke/Carlyle guy in many ways, if he can simply play a more physical game- consistently.

This is why I’m not so inclined to want to see the Leafs try to trade him this summer.  Teams spend a lot of time trying to find 200+ pound wingers who can play the in the corners, along the boards and front of the net, as well as score goals and be defensively responsible.  We already have one of those guys.  We just need to make sure he feels good about his game—and himself—heading into next season.

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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

I choose to believe James Reimer will be back to his old self next season

When a team has earned, what is it, 6 points in the last 17 games or something, it doesn’t require insightful analysis to determine that something is off.  And in recent weeks I’ve posted on various subjects (and will again, I’m sure) that cover part of the laundry list of things that have seemingly befallen the team—including some self-inflicted wounds from on high.

But it gets way too discouraging to simply sit back and criticize every night as the team comes up short game after game.  When they score they can’t stop the other team.  When they are fairly solid defensively, they aren’t scoring. It’s a mess.

(To be clear, I’m not someone who likes the idea of cheering for more losses and therefore, a high draft pick this summer.  There’s nothing wrong with that.  I understand the allure of finally getting a potential superstar talent through the draft.  Who wouldn’t want that?  It’s just that…well, that is not what we are supposed to be thinking about, this far into the ongoing rebuild.  The idea was to make a splash in the playoffs, not back into a top pick by playing poorly.  While a nice top three or four pick might provide some solace (and maybe even that “superstar”) surely this is not where we’re supposed to be.  But I’ll deal with the above matters another time.

For now, my thoughts rest not on Carlyle, the new “system” or even the slump/slideskid—or whatever we want to call it.  I’m not even thinking about the Leaf goaltending “situation”.  I’m more reflecting specifically on the future of James Reimer, the guy we actually have signed to play goal for the next two seasons. (Not that we can sign or trade for someone else this summer…)

We all know the Reimer story.  A Ferguson draft choice, he climbed the Leaf system and by the middle of the 2010-’11 season, joined the big club and became an instant sensation in Leafland.  He was steady, even spectacular at times.  Most importantly, perhaps, when he gave up a bad early goal, he seemed to have the capacity to rebound and play well the rest of the night.  He was often particularly effective when the Leafs were fighting to get back into a game.  He rarely, for example, gave up the big “next” goal that would kill any hopes of a comeback.

This season, on the heels of a nice new three-year contract, he was the unabashed number-one guy—the goaltender Burke and Wilson were going to hang their hat on.  He was young and inexperienced, yes, but more and more teams were going young and “cheap” in goal.  And he was damn good last year.

However, a very unfortunate early-season injury kept him out of the lineup for weeks on end.  Since his return, he has had moments, for sure, but not the sustained kind of steady play that marked his game in his breakout season a year ago.

Of lat, Gustavsson has earned more time, including under Carlyle.  What if any impact that has had to further erode Reimer’s (fragile?) confidence, I have no idea.

I do want to say a few things, here.  I’m not a goaltending expert, by any stretch of the imagination.  Not even close.  I’ve observed the sport for five plus decades and have seen hundreds of NHL goalies come and go, but if you start asking me technical questions, my eyes will glaze over pretty quickly.

What I do know is when I’m seeing a goalie that is on his game, and feeling like he can’t be beat.  And, also like most of you, I can a see when a guy appears to be playing with a fairly shallow level of inner confidence.

That has been Reimer, for the most part, since his injury earlier this season.

I have written here often that I honestly believe the Leaf brass killed a lot of Gustavsson’s confidence—over the past couple of seasons, especially.  I won't go into all of that, again.  If you want to see some earlier posts, click on his name under the “Categories” section on the right-hand side of this site.  You may not agree, but my thoughts are there.

Whether they have now managed to skewer the confidence of another of their own goalies’, how can we know?  But right now, when he does play, Reimer is not looking like a guy who trusts his teammates (can we blame him?) or himself, very much.

All this said, it is not unusual for a young player, and yes, a young goalie, to see his game slip in his sophomore season.  In fact, I would argue that, for goalies, their entire careers can be a roller-coaster of hot periods and times when they struggle to stop a balloon. (I’ve posted on this subject before, citing a number of goalies that have fit this pattern through the years I have followed hockey.)

Bottom line, a few tough weeks, or even a bad season or two, don’t necessarily mean that the goalie in question is finished.  Didn’t many assume Jose Theodore was “done like dinner” years ago?  Yet, there he was in goal Tuesday night, for the Panthers—beating the Leafs.

Steve Mason was talked about like he was the worst goalie in hockey history through much the last two seasons, after his very impressive rookie year.  But before a recent injury, Mason won four in a row for a terrible Columbus team, with an astonishingly highs save percentage over that span.  At 23, is anyone really prepared to say he won’t be a very good NHL goaltender someday—especially if he works behind a good defense at some point, and re-gains that sometimes elusive confidence that most athletes need to be their best?

Look, I get that many are saying the Leafs simply have no had NHL-caliber goaltending this season.  At times, yes, I acknowledge that has been true.  But I make the comments I am today based on watching a lot of young goalies over, well, a long time.

This leads me to simply say, I still really like Reimer’s chances of a rebound next season and beyond, of being the Reimer we saw last year.

He is young.  He has a great temperament.  He has skills.  It strikes me that, as his confidence flagged at times this season, he was often caught “in between”, as in “Do I stay up, do I go down?”  Indecision can’t be a good for a goalie, eh?

I’ve seen enough of him to believe the young man will—after a summer to re-energize, get fully healthy and think on what he experienced this past season—come back better, stronger, wiser and more relaxed at training camp in September.

Could I be wrong?  Of course.  But I’m betting on Reimer, and I’m guessing the Leaf brass think he can be their guy, too.

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Monday, March 12, 2012

We need a boost in Leafland, so let’s go back to Lanny McDonald’s overtime winner against the Islanders in ’78—still a great memory

The last while here Leafworld has been a bit unsettling.  I see Leaf supporters (myself included) adopting positions about the "why's" and "wherefore's" of how we got here yet again this season.  We inevitably end up disagreeing with each other and sometimes, also end up fracturing what is already an often fragmented and fragile fan base.

So since we can't, as fans, do anything about the present, and can only hope that the good signs we see in the current line-up will pay dividends in the near future, why not pause for a night and, rather than talk about the present doldrums, harken back to a much happier time and moment in Maple Leaf history.

Now, compared to teams who have actually won a Cup in the past 45 years (Hab fans should ready no further, for example, and modern-era Red Wing, New Jersey and even Colorado supporters can stop reading, too) even most Leaf fans will acknowledge that an overtime goal in the quarter-finals  of the NHL playoffs shouldn’t be the ultimate high point of cheering for a team over the last four and a half decades.

But when there’s not really all that much to choose from, hey, it is what it is. (In terms of relative importance, I wonder if fans who lived through both eras prefer the Borschevsky goal against Detroit in ’93, or “Dougie’s” wraparound OT winner against Cujo and the Blues that same spring- or is McDonald's marker still the "best"?)

In any event, in that wonderful spring of 1978, the Leafs were a team still built around Darryl Sittler and Lanny McDonald up front and Borje Salming on defense, with young and cocky Mike Palmateer in goal. The team had fought the Flyers hard each of the previous three seasons in the playoffs, but always came up short.  (They had Philly in the spring of 1977, having won the first two games at the old Spectrum.  Then, they were leading 2-0 in Game 3 at home in the second period, before the roof caved in.  There is more on that series here…)

The Leafs had acquired a tough, grinding winger in Dan Maloney before the trade deadline in February of 1978.  (Note:  we really didn’t call it the “trade deadline” in those days; it was more that you had to have your rosters settled before the playoffs, as I recall, and the trade thing was just part of it…)  While they gave up Errol Thompson, who was a fine player on a line with Sittler and McDonald, and two high draft picks, the Leafs and General Manager Jim Gregory knew they needed toughness if they wanted to go anywhere in the playoffs. So they got the toughest guy out there, someone who could also play and score goals.


Maloney was certainly a factor and proved his worth in the Islander series. (The Leafs had already disposed of the LA Kings in a preliminary round, as I recall.)  The Leafs dropped the first two games on the Island, won a pair at home, before succumbing again on the road in Game 5.

Now, in a sense, the real series turning point had actually already happened.  Salming suffered an eye injury that took him out for the duration of the playoffs.  (Not many guys wore visors in those days…)  This is when his enigmatic partner, Ian Turnbull, stepped up and played outstanding hockey just to help get the Leafs to a 7th and deciding game.

Game 7, played on Long Island, was a tight, tense game that went into overtime. (I was working up in Sault Ste. Marie at the time, watching the contest with a friend on TV.)  In one of those plays that seem to spring out of nowhere, McDonald suddenly found himself in alone against Islander goalie “Chico” Resch.  Lanny quickly wristed a shot to Chico’s left-hand (glove) side and suddenly, the Leafs had won a huge best-of-seven playoff round.

I (probably like a lot of Leaf supporters at the time) was shocked to see the Leafs upset the Islanders.  Absolutely stunned- but thrilled.  The Isles were a very solid young team, built around superstar defenseman Denis Potvin and rugged young center Bryan Trottier.  They played with a lot of grit and toughness under coach Al Arbour, the former Leaf player who went on to coach the Islanders to four Stanley Cups not long afterwards. 


Without Salming, who was in his prime at the time, there seemed little chance the Leafs could actually win. But when McDonald scored, the Leafs went wild with joy on the ice and my friend and I weren’t the only blue and white fans hooting and hollering across Ontario (and much of Canada) that night. (Within two years, less actually, former Leaf GM Punch Imlach had returned to Toronto and traded away McDonald to, of all teams, the woeful Colorado Rockies.  That was awful.  But I won't focus on that for today...) You can see a picture of Lanny in action with the old Rockies at right. Great uniforms, eh?

But in 1978, the Leafs looked like a team of destiny, under the young, imaginative, highly tactical and often inspirational head coach Roger Nielson.  But even destiny can crumble if you come up against a superior force, and that year, the Montreal Canadiens were just that, as they took out the Leafs in four straight games in the semi-finals. That Montreal team was one of the best of all-time, with a Hall-of-Fame goalie in Ken Dryden, three superstar defensemen (Savard, Lapointe and Robinson) and a forward contingent so loaded that they had guys in the press box every night who were talented NHL-caliber players.

Still, that was the first time, I believe, that the Leafs had made it that far in the playoffs since 1967, and would be the last time they did so until, well, 1993.

That may be why Leaf fans like myself still talk about Lanny’s overtime goal against the favored Islanders almost as though it was a Cup-winner—just like, I think, many younger Leaf fans think that way about the Borschevsky marker against the favored Red Wings in the spring of ’93.

For many of us as Leaf fans, it was.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, if you have memories of '78 or '93.....

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Sunday, March 11, 2012

Confused Leafs bouncing from pillar to post

It gets very annoying to feel like I am, far too often, writing critically about the Maple Leafs.  I’ve long said here that I want this to be a positive site, one that brings hockey and Maple Leaf fans together—not a place that sees us always do the easy thing:  pick at the team and find faults all the time. (So a warning: if you're not in the mood for what's coming, click off right now.  I will absolutely understand...)

But lately, I find I’m having to fight (not always successfully) the temptation to harangue the organization—not the players so much, but team management.  Why do I feel this way?  Partly because Burke was so arrogant upon his arrival (and subsequently) in his not-so-subtle condemnation of his predecessors like Pat Quinn when he said things like, “I’m not the guy that traded for Owen Nolan…”.  His inference?  Judge him on his time with the club, not on what came before him.  Fair enough.

But unfortunately, when you say things like that, you are clearly throwing the people who came before you under the bus.  So while I don’t like the cheap shot at Quinn, I’ll set that aside and look briefly at Burke’s track record in Toronto.

As I’ve long acknowledged here, Burke has absolutely made progress (and yes, despite the recent skid, there has been progress) here.  We’re a faster team.  Until recently we were pretty entertaining many nights.  The Marlies are a better team.  There is more depth in the system.  (I can’t argue it is proven depth at this point, but we certainly have more players with potential than we have in a long while…)

The truth is, however, Burke is finding it is not as easy as he thought it would be to build a winner in Toronto.

I often mention his comment (stated many times, so it wasn’t just an off-the-cuff, one-time statement) that he had no patience for a “five-year re-build” when he took this job.  That was three and a half years ago.  He has done things to expedite the process, starting with the Kessel trade.  And that’s fine.  We all wanted him to shake things up, and he has.  But based on certain key fundamental criteria, Burke has not accomplished what I would have hoped for, by now.

Why do I say this?

Since he claims he “always” build teams from the back end out, I assumed we would have excellent goaltending by now.  I love that Reimer (but be honest, it was a shock to all, including Burke and most fans) stole the limelight last year.  And it’s great now that Gustavsson (as I’ve suggested in this space many times) is finally getting a run of games and is playing closer to the way I think he can, using his athleticism and instincts.

But really, can we say we have a settled goaltending situation?  I guess I figured we would by now.

Also, I never thought we would quite possibly not be in the playoffs by Burke’s fourth spring at the helm.  Be honest—did anybody?

Finally, I figured yes, we would one day change coaches and when we did, it would be at a time that made strategic sense:  as in, when there was time for the players to adjust to a completely different style of play.  For example, in the summer—and well before training camp.  Instead, he made a panic move to fire Wilson, bring in Carlyle- without taking the time this spring to see who the best available coach is for the most important hockey franchise in the world. (I’m not knocking Carlyle.  Maybe he is the best available coach in the world.  He must be in Burke’s eyes.)  But again, let’s not pretend that, while Burke was doing this for the “longer term”, he also believed Carlyle would light a fire and lead the Leafs to the playoffs this spring.

That may not happen, after the Leafs have stumbled through the last three weeks of Wilson’s tenure and the first few games of the Carlyle era.

I want to be clear:  I’m not passing judgment on Carlyle’s first ten days on the job.  I’ve said here—and elsewhere—that any assessments made prematurely about in-season coaching changes generally mean precious little.  We will be well into next season, or later, before we see the likely effects.

But here’s the thing; this far into Burke’s tenure, we are now bringing in a coach who wants and needs certain types of players.  What does this mean?  Well, it may mean that guys like Kessel—who Burke moved heaven and earth for to get here—may not fit.

So are we re-building again?  Because we need players who will play the way Carlyle wants them to play, right?  And this, after Burke was  seemingly “all in” on the way Wilson’s Leafs were playing- that free-wheeling, offensive, head-manning, entertaining style? (Except, we found out later,  that Burke likes a rougher team than Wilson.  That was a long time to let that fundamental philosophical distinction between GM and coach continue…Wow.)

So will we stop one re-build and start another—with yet more new players?  We’re now going to get rougher again, it seems.  Didn’t Burke say not long ago there was no place for guys like Colton Orr any more?  (He was publicly upset about it, but that’s what he said about where the game was going…)

We’ve already tried the whole over-discussed “truculent” thing.  Komisarek, Orr,  Rosehill, et all.

How did that go?

So now we’re back to that?  Gone is the speed game, replaced by a defensive pre-occupation that borders on well, let’s just say it’s dull.  (But hey, maybe it will be ultimately effective.)

But I know, I know.  People will say:  what do we care, as long as we win.

True.  True.  And maybe when we “win”, I’ll jump on board a bit less grudgingly than what I feel right now.  At the moment, I feel like I’m in limbo.  And whether they will admit it or not (they won't), you better believe the players are playing like they feel they are wearing sunglasses out there.  Obsessed with impressing a new guy, their defensive play and not making a positioning mistake—all while playing "tough" and squeezing their sticks so hard at the other end of the ice, as scoring chances drop and losses keep piling up.

Yes, the goalies (Gus, in this case) look better.  Absolutely.  Of course, almost anyone would under this “system”.

Again, I’m not saying Carlyle, boring style and all, won’t bring more success to the Leafs.   They are playing hard, competing and all that.   In truth, they did that under Wilson too.  In fact, that’s what people often said over the years, that under Wilson, the Leafs weren’t very talented, but they sure played hard.

And, they were entertaining.  But over the past month, they started to lose under Wilson.

Now they’re boring—and they, at least for the moment,  are still struggling to win.

I’ll I’m trying to say, perhaps none too clearly (blame watching too much losing hockey…but they, that’s an excuse…no complaints and no excuses here…) is that, bottom line, the Leafs have not achieved (yet) what I hoped they would under Burke.  And it’s an odd time to have changed everything—coaches, systems— in the middle of the game.

Fans can feel optimistic if they’d like, and say things like, “Ashton sure looks like a nice player”.  Well, so would almost anyone trying to make an impression in his first few games as a Leaf.  We said that same thing in recent years about Schenn, Kadri, Colborne, Frattin, insert name here…

My point?  The Ashton call-up was not based on meritocracy. That is Burke desperately trying to prove he did something at the deadline, that he made a good trade, that Ashton is a player.  Otherwise, how, under our “meritocracy”, could he possibly have been the guy who deserved a call-up over Ryan Hamilton, the captain of the Marlies, or someone who has played hard for the Marlies for the past couple of season (I’m just using Hamilton as an example)?

And that’s the point.  The lack of success has led to changing things in mid-stream, and now they’re just grasping at any straw that flies by.  Gus makes a few nice saves.  Play him—not because the brass believes in him, or even thinks he’ll be here next fall, but the team is, you know, desperate.

Fire the coach.  Sure.  Even though we just gave him an extension (and on that note, how many times have I written here about that very thing—extend a coach when you win a few games and the next thing you know, you want to fire him…).

Need some punch?  Last season it was nonsensically bringing Kadri up in the fall of the 2010-’11 season to save the sinking ship and score goals for a dream that couldn't find the net.  It didn’t work.  Now it’s Ashton to bring...what?   There is no real sense to it.  Just optics to make the GM look good.

Hey, Aston may be a really fine player.  But that’s not really the point, is it.

Yes…that’s where we’ve fallen.  We may start winning between now and the end of the regular season, but to me, it looks like we’re just making it up as we go.  

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