The Leaf corporate “apology” and the year-end media day (Burke and Carlyle): many words but….

I would love to hear from you all about the Leaf ownership “apology” that was published on the team’s web site late Monday night this week.

For me, it was just more empty talk.  (That it was “signed” by Larry Tanenbaum provided little solace.  In fact, it probably just annoyed me all the further.  He and Richard Peddie were behind the big move to oust Pat Quinn as GM back in 2003.  They couldn’t leave well enough alone and we have all seen the results.  Not suggesting the Quinn era (my bias aside) was perfect and yes, it came in the free-spending pre-cap days.  But the Leafs iced very strong teams every season.  With their resources, they should have—and they did.

However, since Tanenbaum and Peddie inserted themselves, this team has gone south in so many ways.  It has been, for me, particularly noticeable since Tanenbaum became the largest individual shareholder instead of the late Steve Stavro.  Through Tanenbaum, we had to listen to the organizational front man, Peddie, all those years, as he stuck his fingers in areas where he had no clue what he was talking about (as in the hockey club's affairs).  He “chaired” the doomed three-man committee that selected John Ferguson Jr. as General Manager in August of 2003.  Ownership proceeded to meddle even further; Ferguson was in over his head, all the while refusing to take advice.  Enough said.

On the apology note, Tanenbaum said that ownership still believes in “the plan”.  He should have added, if only they understood what the plan was.

He spoke of this past season's results being "unacceptable".  I've never quite understood why so many coaches and athletes use that term.  I guess people think it makes them look determined, or something.  It just sounds weak to me.

If you really cared about something having been unacceptable, you would have done something about it long ago.  It's been "unacceptable" around here for years.  Part of the problem is, what is unacceptable is the ownership group led by Tanenbaum.  And they won't fire themselves.

Anyway, I won’t go on.  But let me know if you were impressed by a season-end public “apology”…

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I don’t know how many times I’ve said here that Brian Burke is a shrewd hockey guy.  That’s a compliment.  That said, in my view, he is neither smarter—or better—than any number of good GM’s around the National Hockey League.  I’ve discussed this point here many times before.

His fourth annual year-end debrief with the local Toronto media brought little in the way of major revelations, which was no surprise.  They want to find another goalie (young, old, they don’t know at this point).  And, they want to find (for the fourth summer in succession) a first-line center. 

He still believes in Reimer.  (So do I.)  He still believes in his defense corps. (I’m not so sure about that one.)  And he still believes in his second line of Grabovski, Kulemin and MacArthur. (I do not—at least not as a proven, go-to, modern-day elite-level NHL second line.  Serviceable, maybe.)

He says he wants a team that dictates, rather than being dictated to.  That the team needs to get bigger, and it will only take three or four guys with size who will make the rest of the team play bigger.  That’s true.  I’m with him there.  You don’t need a whole team of big, tough guys.  You just need enough of them to embolden the rest of the group to be able to play their game with confidence.

He responded to one question by acknowledging (no surprise there; he was hardly alone) he was upset by the late-season loss in Boston when the Leafs could not do much about the Bruins and their somewhat physical play.  (Carlyle earlier said, about the same game, that the Leafs looked pretty much mesmerized by what was going on.)

The most shocking thing for me, though, remains the fact that Burke said yet again that he and Ron Wilson had a fundamental disagreement as to how a team should be built, and yet he kept Wilson for more than three seasons as his coach.  I just don’t know how that happens.  That, for me, is huge.  And it is incomprehensible that he retained a coach for years when they disagreed on the most basic premise of all:  how a team should play.  Listen to the tape, it’s right there.  And it’s not the first time he has stressed that point.

I also fundamentally disagree with Burke's premise that Leaf fans were happy until February 6.  No, that’s not true.  On February 6, we had a fast, puck-moving team that - against weak opposition in the regular-season - could on many nights outscore the other team. It was entertaining at times, yes.  And that’s a good thing.  But at best (and the rest of the season proved this clearly), even in our “heady” sixth-place days in the mediocre Eastern Conference, we would have slid (just) into the playoffs and been cannon-fodder for any of the good teams atop the East.  So that hardly constitutes satisfaction for me, or, I’m guessing, many other Maple Leaf supporters.

Anyway, we are where we are, with Carlyle behind the bench and these two guys, it would seem, at least on the same page.

We can debate the nuances of whether the team was in shape or not (Burke claims the team was, and worked hard, just not hard enough for a “Carlyle team”).  But since Burke says he hasn’t changed his view about how a team should be built (hmmm…), it does beg the question: why are we still so far away after three and a half years on the job?

It’s not as though this need for a goalie (just like in Vancouver when Burke was GM there) is new in this market.  Nor is the need for a front-line center or overall team toughness part of some some new trend in the NHL.  Burke talks about those things constantly—you know, building a team from the goal out, being tough, dictating the game, etc.

But we sit here with a small forward group (or players with size who rarely use it), a mistake-riddled defense group and uncertain goaltending this far into his mandate.  When you see the lack of veteran experience, the absence of guys who have won anything anywhere, the lack of team toughness, the lack of grit, it’s not a surprise, is it?  In fact, I’m not quite sure why he looked so confused that this isn’t all coming together smoothly.  The team is missing a ton of parts, and while there is some talent here, he has a roster with a bunch of replaceable fourth-line guys, too.

I found it interesting that he refused to name names when it came to Marlie prospects who would actually be significant Maple Leafs some day.  Perhaps he wants to ensure that hopes in Leafland are not raised around certain names, though Rick Dudley did that for him a couple of weeks or so ago in discussing Colborne as a big-time second-line center next season. (Did I hear that wrong?  Correct me if I'm off-base...)

It was odd that Burke kept raising Carter Ashton’s name.  I just don’t see Ashton, (who I grant you is very young) as a guy who should be anywhere but with the Marlies.  Again, I guess Burke was just trying to promote what he did at the deadline, and the fact that he has a number of former first-round picks in the system.  The proof, however, will be in how many of those picks (Gardiner, Corlborne, Ashton, Kadri, etc.) actually become significant impact guys with the blue and white.

It was interesting as well that he swatted away what he tries to suggest is the myth of the Penguins “build” philosophy, saying they won a lottery and got Crosby—though surely he knows they did a lot more to re-build that organization than simply getting lucky that one time.  (I’m sure Burke would gladly take a lottery ball “win” to help expedite the Leafs’ progress.)

He also spoke of his impatience, using that as his rationale/defense for his oft-stated comment that he had/has no use for a “five-year re-build” (or those GM’s who “buy time” by invoking that phrase).  He just won’t quite come out and admit he got it very wrong here.

He says making the playoffs is not important on the one hand, claiming that his team could (very easy to say, after the failed fact) have made the playoffs the last two seasons if he had simply made trades at the deadline, but it would have meant giving up some of the future and he wasn’t prepared to do that—just to lose in the first round.  (I guess he doesn’t believe in the theory that anything can happen once you get to the playoffs.)  He is building, he says, a championship contender.

All in all the most revealing thing of the morning was perhaps when Carlyle talked about Francois Beauchemin basically being a jumble of nerves when he showed up back in Anaheim last season after his relatively short stay in Toronto.  Not quite sure what we should make of that.  Was that a slam at Ron Wilson?  Or was it simply saying that something happens to guys when they play in Toronto?  It was just odd to hear, and I’m not quite sure what the intent was in Carlyle saying that.  I’m sure pending unrestricted free-agents and their agents will hear that clip and say “next”, when it comes time to choose a team in future.

In any event, as much as I’ve commented here on Burke’s obvious need to bring attention to himself, as in “his way” and “how I build my team”, I did not see this as an exercise in dishonestly or deception.  I think the guy tried to handle questions and issues as directly as any GM can during these chats with the media.  There isn’t any real acknowledgement about failure, however. It’s all couched in stuff that sounds like excuses to me.  If he thinks they need a bigger and/or better roster, he has had time to accomplish that.  That falls on him, no one else.

If that sounds harsh, let me borrow Tanenbaum’s term—sorry.