Today’s sobering thought: if we took the current Leaf roster and put it in, say, Columbus or Carolina, would anyone even talk about the team?

Every once in a while I have to give myself a ‘reality check’ of sorts.  That is, if I start to get pulled into  “buying-in” to the Maple Leaf spin that everything is moving along as per the ‘plan’, that roster changes are coming, that they were wise not to invest mad money in star players because the term was too long, that the goaltending is fine, etc., I try to step back a bit.

Then I do what I always do when that feeling happens:  I pull up the current roster, and ask myself—is this a good NHL team?  Is this a team that can compete to make the playoffs or maybe one day soon, even better, the Stanley Cup?  The answer for me - even with the wholesale roster changes that have already been made and the influx of all these apparently outstanding “prospects” acquired by Burke  - is “no”. 

An emphatic no, in fact.

And maybe the more pointed question is this one:  if we took this exact roster and put in in markets like, for example, Carolina or Phoenix or the Island or hey, Columbus—would anyone take this team seriously?  Would fans in those markets go to the games because of the talent on the roster and the exciting style of play that they would witness under Randy Carlyle?

Would the countless ‘talking-heads’ and ‘insiders’ on radio, television and the Internet talk breathlessly about Brian Burke this and Brian Burke that…and how “close” the Leafs are to being a really good team?

Sadly, for me, the answer is self-evident.  It’s no.  Again, a resounding no.

Oh, the Leafs have some excellent pieces.  There’s, ah…Kessel and maybe Lupul, too, if he stays healthy and has another career year. Grabovski is a nice player.  Gardiner would seem to possess unlimited potential- if his initial season in the league proves to be a harbinger of things to come.

But if we’re really honest—and I don’t mean negative or pessimistic, just really and truly honest—is Dion Phaneuf an elite NHL defenseman?  I mean, he’s a good NHL player.  He hits guys on occasion but how many times last season did we see wingers burst around him like he was standing still?  You can say, “C’mon, Michael, that happens to every defenseman…”.  Well it happens to defensemen, yes.  But it doesn’t happen as frequently to the league’s best as it does to Phaneuf, and people were talking about him like he was "one of the best" last October.

But, he’s not.

Are any of our top “prospects”–Kadri, Colborne, Ashton, etc.—really going to be 'can’t miss' impact players with the Leafs?  (I don't include Frattin because, in my mind,  he's already on the big roster and he's a keeper...) If those young players were in, say, the Florida Panthers system, would we be talking about them like they were going to be high-end NHL players?  Would we even know who they are?

The fact is, every NHL team has quality players they are "building around".  And most teams have a number of "good young prospects".  The Leafs are hardly unique in this regard.

We all recognize that we often make fun of ourselves as Leaf fans.  Why?  Well, our team hasn’t won a championship in 45 years.  (We’re too much like the Chicago Cubs in that regard, eh...) We desperately want to see a return to being a great team, to fit with our franchise’s legendary history.  But we are reduced to being thrilled when the team shows early-season promise, to looks like it might make the playoffs.  The bar is set way too low.

Every summer we believe things will be better. We put ourselves down because we - like Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown in the “Peanuts” cartoon - keep believing the ball will still be there when we arrive to kick it.  But it’s always been pulled away.

And we laugh at ourselves because, as Leaf fans, we often talk like:

• Every guy who is on the trade market, we want

• Every free-agent is coming to Toronto

• Every available goalie we should grab

• All of our prospects are going to be superb NHL players

• Players want to come to Toronto

• Burke is the best GM in the league (not all of us subscribe to this one...)

But even though we may sometimes make fun of our own misfortune, the moment the Leafs win two games (heck, if the team has a couple of good shifts some nights) Twitter explodes with hope, after years of pent-up frustration.  People write things like, "Doesn’t Phil look awesome"....."Did you see Dion lay that guy out?"  and "Look at that move…Kadri is going to be sooooo good someday”.

I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t be enthusiastic, supportive, hopeful, whatever any one of us, as fans, feels like feeling, as they say.  But in the same breath, I think it’s important to be balanced in our thinking and recognize that even if we make roster changes—heck, even if we had signed Parise and Suter, for example—we aren’t winning a Stanley Cup next season.  Their old teams didn’t win a Cup this past season with those players, and they were much, much better teams than the Maple Leafs.

So I go back to my initial question today:  if this team, as it is, or even with some of the expected improvements, was located in one of the markets I mentioned above, would anyone talk seriously about them as a good team, a team worth paying attention to, or “contenders” of any description?

By all means share your perspective….