Burke Fired -- Instant Reaction

With ten days to go before the season starts:

What's the most insane hockey move you could make today?#MapleLeafs firing of Brian Burke has to at least be top 3.
— David Mackintosh (@xdroop) January 9, 2013

And frankly it continues to get weird, since promoted former-deputy-and-not-temporary GM Dave Nonis is pretty much going to keep doing what Burke was doing.  Which is good from a short-term perspective -- there's no sea change expected nine days before the puck drops on the shortened season and makes it perhaps slightly less insane (say top five instead of top three).

But from a long term perspective it is trouble, because the last four years have not exactly yielded any success beyond periodic beatings of better Senators teams.

I've long wondered why the Leafs were so chronically bad. I didn't think that Burke was the idiot that the last four years have made him out to look like, even though his decisions have been head scratching at times.

But then I don't think like a lot of hockey fans. I don't think that Roberto Luongo would be the solution to the Leaf's goaltending issues because the main problem with the goaltending is the rest of the team playing in front of the goalies. I guess that's a rant for a different blogger.

I'd say that for the Leafs, it isn't possible to make things worse any more -- but I've been proven wrong on that time and again.

Happy No Playoffs, Toronto

So just for a giggle, I googled "Truculence".  The Leafs showed up in item 7, a reference to Coach Carlyle asking for and receiving a particular call-up.

The fact that the Leafs show up 7th in this list is funny to me because today they're 14th in the east and have been mathematically eliminated from post-season play.

Sure, they've beat the Senators several times this year, but a team in year four of a rebuild needs to be beating a team in a 1st-year rebuild more reliably.  Heck, they need to be beating a whole lot of other teams more reliably.

Something for Leafs fans to be chewing on this off season* is that if Burke is going to be let go, it has to happen now so that a replacement has a chance to get organized for the upcoming July 1st free agency and the entry-draft later in the summer, as well as seeing about a replacement head coach.  The longer Burke is left in place, the harder it will be for any replacement -- forget a good replacement -- to make a positive impact on next year's fortunes.

But anyways -- Go Sens go!

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* == which let's be honest started mid-February

There Are Greeks In Toronto?

Varada at Welcome To Your Karlsson Years writes at length at the depths of the greek tragedy unfolding in Toronto. Mandatory reading.

Brian Burke Is Pretty Much Finished

By firing Ron Wilson tonight, Brian Burke has put his credibility with the Toronto Maple Leafs firmly behind him.

Now by all means, Wilson had to go. The problem was he probably had to go at the end of last season when the Leafs didn't make the playoffs -- again. The problem was Wilson certainly didn't deserve a contract extension scant weeks ahead of his firing. The problem was that the players had probably tuned him out and had just started waiting for the inevitable swing of the axe.

However, you really can't lay the blame for the Leaf's history at Wilson's feet. It would be nice for Leafs fans if you could* but the problem with the team is the on-ice personnel, and the buck for those decisions stop in the GM's office.

Frankly the Leaf's recent success -- that is, the success that immediately predated the recent lack of success -- was probably due to the same factors that Ottawa profited from earlier this season. Teams saw the Leafs as easy pickings, only to discover that in the NHL even the easy-pickings teams can beat you if you don't take them seriously. Once the rest of the league got the message that hey, Toronto needed to be taken seriously, bam, we return to regularly scheduled programming.

I read something a few years ago that I liked. It said: deficiencies for special teams' play are the fault of the coach, because it is the coach's systems which either work or don't, his messages which gets through or doesn't, his ability to get buy-in which works or doesn't. But for five on five hockey: the credit or blame for how the team does belongs to the GM. That's his group of people that he's assembled. And if it works, he's a genius, and if it doesn't, he's a goat.

Burke's fingerprints are pretty much all over the Leafs. The fact that they are -- again -- probably going to miss the playoffs is now his fault, and unless something happens soon, Burke's departure is the next change that needs to be made.

He's tried building through the draft. Actually no he didn't, he traded away two first round picks to Boston for a player who, while being a very good player, can't carry the entire team on his back. Frankly he should have waited two years to make that kind of trade, giving him assets to build from within before trading away his immediate future in pursuit of immediate, improbable, success.

He's tried trading away a quarter of his team to the Calgary Flames.

He's tried shaming his players through the media.

He couldn't find something to do before the trade deadline. Now that might be a very good thing, we have no idea who was demanding how much for what, and frankly A) there's no point having a fire sale and B) there really wasn't much to sell.

Burke's 2011-2012 plan has basically boiled down to then miracle happens.

Firing Wilson now is a tacit admission of that fact.

And really, Leafs fans better hope he doesn't get one.

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*= and I'm pretty sure tomorrow I'll wake up to a RSS reader full of articles doing precisely that

This Is Not A Rhetorical Question

OK, so congratulations to Team Canada for their gold medal (mens and womens). I'll even suffer the cliche-in-the-making Sidney Crosby scoring the overtime goal to win it (although I am not looking forward to the next few months of Tim Horton's ads that this will undoubtedly spawn).

But I have a question.

Look at these two fine gentlemen:



These men picked and managed a USA team that wasn't rated highly. Know how much confidence they had in their team? Everyone was scheduled to fly out Sunday morning at 9:30 AM instead of staying for the gold medal game. And yet, their team managed to school the highly-rated Canadians in the round-robin and worked their way to the gold medal game where they came within a hair of winning an upset victory over said highly rated Canadian team.

The USA team was the best kind of opponent: a highly skilled, motivated team that can beat you. They were, in the best sense, a team worth beating. A team you had to bring, and keep, your A-game for, and hope for some lucky bounces on top of that.

So, having accomplished all that, these fine gentlemen are obviously nobody's fool. They know their business and can compete at the highest levels with an eye towards success.

So my question is:

Why on earth are the Maple Leafs so bad?

No, seriously.

Why have these two not been able to bring the same kind of success to the Toronto Maple Leafs? Why have they not been able to turn the Leafs into a team that can win regularly? A team that, in the best sense, is worth beating?

Brian Burke's Evil Plan

It occurred to me this morning -- maybe the Toronto Maple Leafs are Brian Burke's expression of genius. Maybe, just maybe... Burke is trying to tank his way into a decent draft pick.

I mean, what else could seriously be the goal here? He's made no bones about wanting tough players... who may be tough, but they sure can't play NHL-caliber hockey. He's kept around Toskala, who's play certainly isn't up to redeeming the failures of the rest of the team.

The entire team is untradable now.

Think about it.

Brian Burke is a frickin' genius.

(Previously.)

UPDATE: The only problem with this theory is the fact that Toronto no longer has a first round pick in 2010:

The Toronto Maple Leafs' first-round pick will go to the Boston Bruins as the result of a trade on September 18, 2009 that sent this pick along with a second-round pick in 2010 and a first-round pick in 2011 to Boston in exchange for Phil Kessel.

So I really don't know what's going on in Toronto. Could you really make a worse hockey team if you tried?