The Pitiful State of the Toronto Maple Leafs

The embarrassing state of the franchise rests in large part on two judgements made by Brian Burke in his first summer on the job. The fallout from which has created a chain of events hurting the team more and more each time.

Poster boys

Brian Burke’s first mistake was thinking that he had anything other than a bad hockey team. His second mistake was thinking that Phil Kessel was anything more than a complimentary player. From those decisions onward, the team’s fate was all but sealed.

The Toronto Maple Leafs were a team without an identity, and Brian Burke sold the farm to acquire a player who barely had one himself. Phil Kessel is a terrific goal scorer, but he was never going to lead the Maple Leafs. It has always been pretty clear by his demeanor that he was never really going to lead any team.  He is the kind of player that makes a good team great and a great team damn near unstoppable. But he is not the kind of player who you can build a winning identity around.

All this left the team with the horribly clichéd “leadership vacuum”.  Kessel brought no identity, and the likes of Bozak, Stajan or Komisarek would never be taken seriously as a captain, so Burke went out and traded garbage for garbage. He got a big shiny piece of garbage from Calgary in exchange bunch of gungy little pieces of garbage.

Is it so fucking hard to tie?!

Phanuef came in and did the first thing every jackass does when they want people to think they’re a “leader”; get loud. Enough jokes have been made about Burke’s dressing room music comment, but suffice to say, that sounds more pushy and dickish than “leaderly” to me.

So Dion came in, made a lot of noise, had a “brand name” from the WJHC and the 2004 Cup run, fast forward to the summer and Brian Burke uses the opportunity to fill that leadership void. Burke is brash and somewhat bullyish himself, so why wouldn’t he identify with Phanuef?

I was skeptical of the decision, but I realized it was definitely a horrible mistake at the press conference for his captaincy.

I know public speaking can be difficult, but this is a person who is clearly reading that piece of paper for the first time. I might think a person who understands and appreciates the meaning and value of that press conference, of the Leafs' captaincy, might have attempted to read over, if not full on practice at least the opening of their statement! This is not the mark of an intelligent, thoughtful man. A man who cares about his word, his good name, and his career doesn't just show up to something this important and stare down at the podium reading from a piece of paper.

Now I am not saying that to be a good hockey player you need to be articulate or intelligent but they're a great asset to a good leader. There is a reason people admire (or maybe I should say 'admired') Brian Burke as a GM, and it isn't because of results. It is because of the confidence and gravitas with which he carries himself. His personality and demeanor in press conferences, in any public speaking role, is the reason why he is where he is today.

Bottom line is, when Phanuef is not on the absolute top of his game (which is usually) and "leading by example" he brings nothing to the table. Players like that are not suitable captains.

Leader of men.

So now the Leafs are stuck with a defensively incompetent captain with an albatross contract who, if you believe reports, is not all that popular in the dressing room; a star player who may not be all that inclined to re-sign; and zero goaltending depth. The few nice moves Burke has made can’t even begin to compensate for the colossal shit storm he kicked up during his first summer as GM.

Not that I trust him to change direction and start doing things properly at this point anyway, but hopefully all this embarrassment has taught him something. If he can spend the next couple seasons hoarding draft picks, he just might be able to set this franchise up for a nice run just in time for him to fail upwards and name his own successor as GM.

Though what I more genuinely expect to see is him double down on this "quick rebuild" nonsense and set the franchise up for another 3 or 4 years of purgatory before he gets fired and gets a job at TSN where he can rant about league issues at will without hurting the Maple Leaf franchise.

This is why Leaf fans have such great senses of humour.

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