DGB is always funny, and his piece in today’s Post is no exception.  Understand that I mean this when I tell you that notwithstanding DGB’s brilliance, the biggest and best laugh for me came after I happened to glance at the comments section (something I normally wouldn’t do at a newspaper site, for fear of having stupidity burrow through my eyes into my brain and turn me into a Hamilton City Councillor).

I’ve transcribed it here because I’m afraid the National Post will do a disservice to the history of humour in this country and consign this most excellent piece of humour writing to the digital dustbin.  In the piece, DGB sets out the good, the bad and the prognosis for ten currently unsigned free agents.  It features predictions that Darcy Tucker will sign with “Sami Kapanen’s sweat drenched nightmares” and opines that Anti Niemi was the “most over-rated Stanley Cup winning goalie in the entire league last year”.  Beneath DGB’s estimable roster of jokes, though, some ingenious wag has written:

“the most over-rated Stanley Cup winning goalie in the entire league last year.”

Now, I pride myself on knowing more than just a little about hockey having spent the last nearly 50 years involved in the sport….but please, educate me….how many other Stanley Cup winning goalies WERE there in the league last year?? I’m not arguing he was over-rated as surely this was just another example of a goalie getting hot at just the right time but please, this statement makes NO sense what-so-ever.

No doubt, some folks will be into the gnashing of teeth, given the Thrashers’ two goals in less than a minute in the second period.  No doubt, the Leafs fell apart for a bit for a few minutes there, and they paid for it when Atlanta cashed in a couple of markers.  Keep in mind, though, that this is the youngest team in the NHL.  They are bound to lose focus and composure from time to time this year, and it must be remembered that this will happen from time to time next year too.  The key thing for Leaf fans to watch when this happens – not “if”, but “when” – is how the team reacts.

A couple of nights ago, the Leafs got themselves down 2-0 to the Rangers after two periods and managed to come back and get a win in overtime.  Tonight, the comeback wasn’t complete, but the team bore down and got a couple of goals to tie it before surrendering the eventual winner on an Antropov tip in front of Gustavsson.   There was some inspired play from Bozak again tonight, his pass to Stalberg on Stalberg’s first goal was brilliant.  Stalberg himself showed some good determination to get to the net, though it was a bit alarming to see that his shot on that first goal was actually headed wide but bounced rather fortunately off the goaltender’s skate and in to the net.  Tonight was probably one of Christian Hanson’s better games as a Leaf.  There were also some terrific saves from Gustavsson – especially his save on Afinogenov with about two and a half minutes left in the second period, when Afinogenov was in alone on him just before the first Stalberg goal.

So yeah, another Tuesday night, another loss to a mediocre southeastern opponent, but I’ll say it again:  there is reason for hope.

The four ugliest men in professional hockey since the invention of the camera? Discuss.

(Glove tap to my Twitter peeps, I’m sorry, I can’t remember who participated in the discussion a couple of weekends ago.)

Look what I found lying around yesterday…

March 25, 2010

Dear Valued Employee:

As a Toronto Maple Leaf player, you are invited to attend the annual Toronto Maple Leafs end-of-season banquet and awards ceremony.  This year, the banquet will be held on Saturday April 17th, 2010 at Jack Astor’s, unless of course we make the playoffs.  Ha ha, just kidding!  Seriously, though, the banquet is on the 17th at 7 p.m. sharp.

I’m not including a map to (or the address of) the specific Jack Astor’s restaurant we’re going to because it’s important that we keep the location of our team shindig confidential, to avoid having any unwanted guests.  In unrelated news, I’ve told Rickard Wallin (through a Swedish interpreter, he doesn’t read English) that we’ll be at Wendel Clark’s Classic Grille in Oakville.  He has been instructed to arrive early, demand to speak with the owner, and threaten him with trouble if we don’t enjoy our evening (which I have booked under the name “Fetisov”).  Don’t spoil the surprise for Ricky – remember how many stitches it took to close up the wound in Jason Blake’s face last year?  Oh, right, almost none of you were here for that.  Well trust me, it was good times.

The dinner menu at the actual, non-fake, banquet location includes: beef.  If you do not want to eat beef, or if you are a vegetarian or have other incorrect desires, let me just say that Edmonton gets pretty cold in the winter and – as incredible as it may sound – the Oilers are less likely than even us to win anything anytime soon. Jonas Gustavsson can have pickled herring, but only because he has a couple of doctor’s notes and I don’t like to get covered in exploding heart blood.  Remember, for this meal, the “Wellwood Rule” is in effect so portions will be limited to six servings of 48 oz. each.

After dinner of course, we’ll be handing out the end of season awards.  By tradition, your Master of Ceremonies will be the longest serving Leaf player, Tomas Kaberle.  As you know, also by tradition, the M.C. is ineligible to win any of the awards.  We offered to move Kabby out of that spot, but he insisted that he isn’t concerned about winning and wanted to stay (why does this sound familiar?);  in fact, he would like to MC both this year and next.  I can say that we’re prepared to meet him halfway on that one.

Awards to be presented this year include:

• the David Williams Memorial “Mister Congeniality” Plaque (2010 recipient: Colton Orr – has anybody else noticed no one has disagreed with Colton about anything since he dummied Matt Carkner?);

• the Wendel Clark “Most Valuable Player” Trophy (2010 recipient: Jeff Finger – shhh, don’t say anything, I’m talking trade with someone whose name rhymes with “Errol Flutter” and this MVP thing may get us Jarome Iginla and a pick); and

• the Gary Leeman “Best Teammate” Prize (2010 recipient: former Leaf Vesa Toskala, in honour of the unremitting dedication to his craft he displayed.  He doesn’t know it yet, but Vesa will be in attendance at the Banquet courtesy of a burlap sack, some duct tape and the trunk of Jay Rosehill’s car.  Please note that this award will be presented posthumously and as soon as possible:  bring your own blunt object.)

After the awards ceremony, though it’ll be tough to top that last award, we’ll be moving to the entertainment portion of the evening.  Right now, the plan is for Phil Kessel, Nikolai Kulemin and Tyler Bozak to come up with something to dazzle us all. The rest of us will have to hope that’s enough.  So it’s pretty much business as usual.

Since he ought to contribute something to the team this year, Garnet Exelby will be responsible for bringing the beer.  When he screws that up, we’ll just buy some from the bar.  Please note that in view of the numerous unfortunate incidents resulting in so much broken glass at the goaltenders’ table last year, players are asked not to toss bottles to one another at any time.

Remember that while in attendance at this function, you are representing Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment and the Toronto Maple Leafs.  Be pleasant and respectful to the wait staff, bartenders and busboys, especially Boyd Devereaux and Justin Pogge.

Stay as late as you like, and enjoy yourself.  Our next meeting as a team will be in Los Angeles on draft day.  Maybe we can go to the zoo or something, we’ll have plenty of time on our hands.

Yours truly,

Hail to the Chief!

There was a report on TSN’s website Sunday night that the National Hockey League Players’ Association is preparing to offer Donald Fehr the top job with the union.  Those of you following along at home will recall that the last fellow who was hired to do this job, Paul Kelly, was comically and hilariously quite suddenly fired after less than two years on the job – for no particular reason that anyone could put their finger on.  Mr. Fehr, before he became a grumpy retired person, was the Executive Director of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association from 1986 to 2009, and that just went swimmingly for everybody concerned.

What can we expect if Donald Fehr  becomes the next Executive Director of the NHLPA?  I fed the relevant data into the Digital Overlord (the Silicon-based lifeform in whose home Spouse and I reside, and at whose direction and behest we perform all functions in meatspace), let its hard drives, LEDs and assorted geegaws whirr away for an hour or two, and then retrieved the following scientifically guaranteed predictions concerning future events in the NHL:

1. April 1st, 2010 (morning):  ESPN reports Donald Fehr officially announced as new Executive Director of the NHLPA.   For two hours, National Hockey League President Gary Bettman refuses to believe that this announcement is anything but a cruel April Fool’s joke, just like that time that Sports Illustrated published the story about Sidd Finch.  After lunch, Bill Daly arrives and shows Bettman a copy of the story confirming Fehr’s hiring in the New York Times.  Realizing the story is true, Bettman pees a little on his fancy President chair, hops down from it and runs into the Executive Washroom.  He refuses to come out of the bathroom for six hours.  League staff swear that, through the heating vents, they can hear someone sobbing and cursing Eric Lindros’ name.
2. April 1st, 2010 (afternoon): Fehr gives an interview to Stephen Brunt of the Globe and Mail.  Brunt asks Fehr what reason he had for changing his mind about retirement.  Fehr says, “I’m only 62 years old;  I wasn’t ready to spend my time  playing golf in Vegas with a bunch of ninety-year old men.”
3. April 2nd, 2010: Fehr takes a congratulatory call from recently-elected Atlanta Thrashers Player Representative Chris Chelios, who inquires about getting together for a round after the NHL Awards.  For the first time, Fehr wonders if he’s made a horrible mistake.
4. September 1st, 2010: At the end of his first month in office, Fehr declares himself “up to speed” on the business of hockey and calls a press conference.   He publicly denounces the league in general and Commissioner Bettman in particular for wrongfully depriving players of their rightful share of vast sums of money earned by the league from the U.S. Network television deal.  ”Obviously,” Fehr is quoted as saying, “that pittance that Versus is paying the league can’t be the only national TV revenue coming in from all of America.  I mean, come on;  Versus isn’t even a real network.” He goes on to point out that NHL games also appear on NBC, and says the players don’t seem to be getting their share of any NBC rights money, saying.  “It’s NBC;  they’ve gotta be paying the league something, right?”  Entire room bursts into laughter;  Fehr looks confused and storms out.
5. September 2, 2010: Previously cozy relationship between the NHLPA and NHL is torn asunder.   Bettman is deeply offended by the allegations of deceit and will not return Fehr’s phone calls.  As a result, a work stoppage ensues.  For six continuous weeks, Fehr’s own staff work daily to convince him that the Versus revenues really are the only U.S. TV money.  When he finally comes to the realization that this is true, a further six weeks of work stoppage follow merely because Fehr does not want to apologize to Bettman.  ”After all,” he confides to an assistant, “if I say I’m sorry, I’m just going to have to sit next to that fucking guy at the All-Star Game.”
6. October 16th, 2010: Plans to accuse NHL owners of colluding with one another to artificially depress the free agency market are scrapped when Fehr – who has still never even been to a hockey game – learns that in the summer of 2009, the Montreal Canadiens agreed to pay 35 year-old defenceman Jaroslav Spacek $3.8 million dollars a year, for each of the next three years, to not score any points for their team.  Fehr, who knows so little about hockey that he calls goalies “backcatchers”, immediately calls Bob Gainey’s number.  When Gainey answers, Fehr simply says, “You’re a fucking idiot,” and hangs up.  Coincidentally and unbeknownst to Fehr, this is the 215th consecutive day on which Gainey has received such a phone call.
7. November 1st, 2010: NHLPA Player reps, concerned about previous incidents in which union leadership surreptitiously read their personal correspondence, conduct a secret surprise inspection of Fehr’s office and computer.  They are relieved to find that Fehr has not had access to any player email.  They are, however, disturbed to learn that he has apparently been spending seven to ten hours a day on Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com and Craigslist.  Worse still, they find a partially completed job application in his name that appears to come from the Starbucks across the street.
8. December 22nd, 2010: Fehr is photographed sitting on the lap of a shopping mall Santa Claus;  bystanders swear that he was overheard asking Santa for an important job in  a more popular and widely known sport, like maybe the B.A.S.S. Pro Tour, the Pro Bowler’s Association or the National Pinochle Tour.
9. March 1st, 2011: Concerns that the NHL’s new “head shot” rules would be difficult for officials to enforce prove unfounded when it is announced that the cranial circumference of all NHL players has increased by 50%.  Players’ heads become impossible to miss, obscuring many fans’ view of the video scoreboard above centre ice, and all body contact is eliminated from the game entirely.  Fehr declares the NHL’s substance abuse policies a success, excuses himself from the press conference and goes to work at his other job: selling popcorn at the Cineplex Odeon.
10. March 15th, 2011, 11:39 p.m: Fehr is invited to attend a hastily-called meeting in Rome, New York that he is told is intended to celebrate the 1st anniversary of his hiring.  He points out to one of the fellows in the room – a guy that he hasn’t seen around the office before, but who looks suspiciously like Eric Lindros – that he hasn’t worked for the PA for a year yet.  Other players keep referring to this guy as “Brutus” and laughing.  A group of player reps approach him from behind and begin patting him – perhaps a bit too vigorously – on the back.  Fehr wakes up in the emergency room with several knives protruding from his back and a crumpled pink slip in his hand.  The fellow they kept calling “Brutus” is having a conversation with one of the E.R. doctors and is insisting that since Obamacare got passed, there must be a death panel that could “take care” of the guy he brought in.  Doctors refuse to comply with the man’s request, but do insist that Fehr get off the gurney and work his scheduled evening shift emptying bed pans in the geriatric ward.
11. March 16th, 2011: Fehr attempts to send his letter of official resignation to interim executive director Eric Lindros, but learns that Lindros has himself been deposed by a heretofore unknown faction of Sandanista guerillas within the NHLPA.  That faction was replaced an hour later by Fidel Castro, who lasted fifteen minutes until he was himself replaced by a particularly militant Bobby Orr-emblazoned thermos that had been stored in an office closet since 1971.

Saw the second and third periods, and the overtime too.  Some thoughts:

• J.S. Giguere needs to be tied to the crossbar.  I’m not harshing on Jiggy in general;  he made a great save in the OT on Lecavalier’s quasi-breakaway.  I’m not even talking about the play in OT where he chased after a loose puck after Stalberg turned it over up ice.  I know that he pretty much had to race for that puck, though the Leafs were lucky that the Lightning couldn’t hit a wide open cage when his clearing attempt was cut off.  In the second and third periods though, he handled the puck like Tiger Woods handles an Escalade. (Thank you, I’m here all week, please don’t forget to tip your server). Bottom line:  though Jiggy has played reasonably well and has been a vast improvement over Vesa “I Wouldn’t Have Thought That Had a Chance” Toskala, the more I see Giguere out to get stick on puck, the more I think I am in favour of the trapezoid rule;
• Nikolai Kulemin is money, baby.  Dollars, pesos, rubles, you name it, he is cash money.  That is all;
• Loved the game Dion Phaneuf played.  Carl Gunnarsson too;
• It’s important not to read too much into this win over the Lightning – beating a playoff bubble team that has about as much success outside of Florida as pink and green aluminum siding – but the Leafs showed speed, determination and passion yet again.  This team is beginning to believe that they can win games with the present collection of personnel.  They’re wrong about that, but it’s a step in the right direction and when the overall talent level is improved a little, up front especially, that little bit of confidence can go a long way towards creating a dangerous team.

All in all, it was another performance that, regardless of its defensive warts, proved that the Leafs might be accused of having questionable talent, but can’t be accused of exhibiting minimal effort.

As for the broadcast crew, I noticed that for the second time in as many games Joe Bowen was unable to correctly  distinguish between a Leaf defenceman and a Leaf goaltender.  This time, he has Francois Beauchemin making a save on Vincent Lecavalier OT quasi-breakaway.  I took a lot of crap from Joe Bowen fans as a result of yesterday’s post;  again I say that I’m a Joe Bow fan myself, but I think we’re entitled to expect him to be able to articulate the name of the Maple Leaf netminder with some degree of regularity and reliability at this point in the season.  Watch the YouTube clip below.  The first segment shows Giguere chasing the loose puck after Stalberg’s turnover;  Bowen gets this bit right.  In the second segment, though, rather than Jiggy he has other French guy Francois Beauchemin making the save on Lecavalier.  Again, I’m not saying this means Joe Bowen is a bad broadcaster who doesn’t deserve to be on TV. I am saying that he’s gotta bring his game up a little bit, though.

Typically, fans are concerned that their professional heroes have given up and are going through the motions;  team management typically attempts to assuage these fears by stressing that players are auditioning for jobs for the next season.  They commonly also offer hope that the team is using the remaining games as a developmental exercise – setting specific goals and trying to learn how to win by achieving those goals, regardless of their ultimate factual irrelevance.

Happily for Toronto Maple Leafs fans, it would seem that the Leaf players are buying in to this narrative for the most part.  The Blue and White put in a mostly spirited effort against a depleted Bruins club that has given them fits this year, eventually prevailing in overtime on a goal by Nikolai Kulemin.

So no worries about anybody going through the motions in Leaf-land, right?  At least for one night?

Well, not quite.  The television broadcast crew that brought us the game on Sportsnet last night had some real difficulties.  In particular, Joe Bowen and Greg Millen seemed to be having an inordinate amount of difficulty keeping Jonas Gustavsson and Carl Gunnarsson straight.  It’s true that both men are Swedish and both are relatively new additions to the Leaf team whose last names begin with the letter “G”.  Really, though, is it too much to ask that the crew whose job it is to know about these players could, by the time game number 66 rolls around, reliably distinguish between the team’s much-hyped young goaltender and a defenseman who has pleasantly surprised?  Nevertheless, throughout Tuesday night’s game, Bowen and Millen continuously tripped over the Gustavsson/Gunnarsson identification.

This unfortunate difficulty manifested itself most notably late in the second period with the Bruins leading 2-1.  Following a faceoff in the Bruins’ zone, Carl Gunnarsson directed a shot at the Bruins’ goal that found the twine, tying the game at twos.  Regrettably, Joe Bowen attributed this goal to Jonas Gustavsson – the Leafs’ goaltender.   Check out the clip (from YouTube) below:

Happily for all fans of the Blue and White, it was the Leafs who showed up ready for the most recent installment of the Battle of Ontario.  They ran the Senators out of the building, quickly and efficiently, much to the despair of Senators fans everywhere.

Following along with the game’s progress in the aforementioned game thread is an exercise in comparative anthropology:  whereas ordinary human beings experience “reality”, we are able to learn that Senators fans enjoy a rich and imaginative fantasy world of their own invention.  In this charming, but barely recognizable version of the world :

• Despite the fact that Roberto Luongo is superior in every statistical category, Cam Ward should be on the Canadian Olympic Team instead;
• Nick Kypreos is preferable as a hockey journalist…when compared to any other human being;
• It is uncertain who the “most overrated” band of all time is, but we know that the honour belongs to one of either Led Zeppelin or the Beatles; and
• The “running” of J.S. Giguere by Daniel “Clownpants” Alfredsson was a great job.
  After that, with the Senators thoroughly failing to provide any sort of sustained resistance to a Leaf victory, things got decidedly more fatalistic and profane.  They also got less entertaining, except in a “Senators fans, your tears of shame are delicious” sort of way.  Which, come to think of it, I enjoyed very much thank you. 

By the end of the second period, with the Leafs up 4-0 and the Senators hiding in plain sight, live in HD and to the obvious delight of a raucous Air Canada Centre crowd, one Senators fan assessed the situation as follows:

I quit. This is bull. This game can go fuck itself.

More or less symbolizing the pervasive emotional distress inflicted upon Senators fans by the end of the game was this tweet from DHSpeedwagon.  In addition to publicly wrestling with alcohol-induced impure thoughts about CTV newscaster Sandy Rinaldo following the ignominious trouncing of his Ottawa side, DHS advised us that:

For anyone worried about me Mrs. Speedwagon has hid all the knives and taken away my shoelaces. My wine rack is bearing the brunt.

By way of contrast, here in Juniorvania, I watched the game with Spouse.  Her commentary, some of which I relayed by way of Twitter, was much more perceptive than that of the Senators fans assembled in the game day thread, but no less entertaining:

• On Daniel Alfredsson:  (with suitably scrunched-up expression on her face) “I don’t like him”;
• On the Senators first attempt with the man advantage: “This is a shitty powerplay so far.  They’ve done fuck all”.  The historical record will show that she was absolutely correct about this;
• On Jason Spezza:  “He seems a little goofy.”  In the interest of fair and accurate reporting, I should point out that Spezza was not especially disliked by her, being thought to be generally a pleasant enough young fellow, even after this video of Spezza laughing was brought to her attention (via Twitter by  KidKawartha);
• On the Senators supporting cast of aging and ineffective shit-disturbers: “I’m not that fond of that Neil fellow either”;
• Daniel Alfredsson, reconsidered: “I just don’t like him.  There’s something off about him.”

There followed a discussion in our living room about whether it was appropriate for me to be broadcasting Spouse’s observations without prior consultation on the issue.  I assured her that the merriment I and others were deriving was most assuredly not at her expense.  After nevertheless briefly being subject to a wide-ranging gag order, I was able to secure her consent to continue sharing;  that concession was obtained by resorting to the age-old favourite of petulant and spoiled children everywhere: the guilt trip.  I told her that my Leaf-fan Tweeples would be disappointed not to be able to share her experience of watching the game.   She reluctantly relented, though she seemed a little less quick to opine upon the game from that point forward.  She did, however, offer the following:

• On the occasion of an excellent shorthanded chance by Leaf rookie Christian Hanson: “Hey what happened, I thought Ottawa had a powerplay?”
• On CBC play-by-play man Bob Cole: “I like this announcer guy.  He sounds about a thousand years old”;
• On Glenn Healy’s reckless and irresponsible usage of the term “shutout” midway through the second period: she was incensed.

I have to confess that soon after this, I became distracted by an unsettling notion that I have seen Senators coach Cory Clouston somewhere before.  Spouse became somewhat distracted herself, though she (like Down Goes Brown) was more intent on learning the identity of the bearded fellow that sits behind the Leaf bench at the ACC.  More on that in a moment, but while I pondered the question of Clouston’s twin, I neglected to report the following additional Spousal pronouncements (retrieved from memory alone):

• Daniel Alfredsson, reconsidered once again: “There’s something….clowny about him.  He’s like Sideshow Bob.  He might be very nice in person, but there’s something just not right about him at all”;
• On Ottawa Senators fans and their impression of Daniel Alfredsson: “Do they like him?  Why?”

In addition, Spouse referred to Matt Carkner as the “man with the brain injury” throughout the game (after he was punched into another dimension by Colton Orr).  Late in the game, she watched as Chris Campoli (who had tipped one into his own net late in the first period) carry the puck up the ice into the Leafs’ zone, then simply glide to a halt hesitantly and stand there as the Ottawa attack fizzled without a shot.  When he was promptly stripped of the puck and the Leafs headed back up ice, Spouse said simply, “Oh, dear.  That man has had a really bad game.”

He wasn’t alone among the lads from the NCR, and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

As for Cory Clouston’s doppleganger:  no doubt about it, it’s Gary from “Team America World Police.”

One of these fellows is creepily wooden; the other was in a movie.

A terrific effort from all the Leafs.  I was particularly impressed (for the third game in a row) by the effort from the Sjostrom/Wallin/Kulemin line.  I never thought I’d type “impressed” and “Wallin” in the same sentence this year, but there you have it.  With two timely goals scored via slapshot in an opportunistic fashion, not to mention a solid defensive effort, Luke Schenn also made me look like a genius, which I always appreciate.

]]> http://heroesinrehab.ca/blog/2010/02/07/what-senators-fans-and-spouse-had-to-say-about-the-game/feed/ 4 http://heroesinrehab.ca/blog/2010/02/02/welcome-hope-we-thought-youd-never-get-here/ http://heroesinrehab.ca/blog/2010/02/02/welcome-hope-we-thought-youd-never-get-here/#comments Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:48:16 +0000 junior http://heroesinrehab.ca/blog/?p=1253 It was only one game.  One game in another lost season;  one game against a (recently) struggling Eastern Conference opponent and their backup goaltender.

Still, tonight’s 3-0 Leaf victory finally gave more than a little reason for hope to long-suffering Leaf fans.  There was a goaltender in our net who made saves and who seemed confident about it.  There was a beast of defenceman, Phaneuf, thumping offensive interlopers.  Nikolai Kulemin was driving to the net, taking the puck through the middle of the ice decisively and in such a way as to create some worried moments for opposition defenders.  Frederik Sjostrom showed some determination and self-sacrifice on the penalty kill and – for what may be the first time this year, at least for a Maple Leaf defender – forcing an opposition defenseman to abort the plan to shoot and dump off a “second-best” pass instead.  There was a power play goal from Francois Beauchemin.

More generally, for the very first time this year, our team came out ready to play from the opening faceoff.  If this trade has changed nothing else but the Leafs’ alarming tendency to tentatively piss away at least the first ten minutes of every game, frequently surrendering the lead and always ceding the momentum, it will have been worth it.

It was only one game; there are no guarantees that this widespread improvement will last.  A lot of the numbers suggest that there are still lots of difficult times ahead for a Maple Leafs time that has little by way of  personnel on the forward lines who have proven they can score in the NHL (at least beyond Phil Kessel).   The goaltender’s performance has been trending downwards for a while, and the defence have struggled to shut the door on a consistent basis.  All of these things demand that one keep perspective and remember that you cannot infer the existence of a trend from a small sample size of data.  It was only one game.  For the first time this year, though, I felt like watching one Leaf game tonight wasn’t enough.

———

As an aside, shoutouts to eyebleaf of Sports in the City who (fittingly enough) headed off for a lengthy trip to India earlier this evening.  I say “fittingly enough” because eye has been one of the few consistently positive voices in the Barilkosphere;  there is something fitting about eye beginning a lengthy holiday on the very day that hope seemed to walk in the front door of the Air Canada Centre for the first time in a long time.  After working so diligently over the last couple of years to ensure that at least some of us can see the bright side of things, eye can finally move on to other adventures.  Safe travels, brother, you will be missed in these parts, but we look forward to your return.

I’ll wait a moment or two while you make whatever derogatory, insulting and completely justified remarks about the woeful performance of the Blue and White.

(taps foot.  scratches ear.  coughs.  looks at watch.  scratches ear again. yawns.  checks email.  still scratching ear. you done yet? cracks knuckles…)

Well, that took some time but I’m glad we got it out of the way.  Very inventive use of profanity by you, by the way;  you have a special gift.  Your mother must be so proud!   To summarize, then:  the Leafs’ recent performance ranks somewhere on the acceptability scale between “cannibalism” and “child pornography”;  let us all agree that the Buds’ bed is now well and truly shat and – though it’s only late January – this has to be seen as another lost season.

I’ll have more to say about the reasons I think these things have happened and I hope to get into some discussion about the future too, but for now I want to give MLSE props where props are due.  I can hear the yowls of protest from the talk radio haters now; what good could possibly be said about MLSE? Everybody (well, at least everybody who calls into talk radio shows) knows that MLSE is a soulless corporate behemoth, one that greedily hoards every spare cent for the Pension Plan, right?  Everybody knows that the greed of ownership is the reason the Leafs always suck, right?  And everybody knows that’ll never change because the suits don’t have any incentive to ice a competitive team when they’re making money hand over fist already, right?

Except that the truth is more complicated than that.  As for basic economics and the impetus to compete, this myth has been compellingly debunked elsewhere by a commentator no less cynical than Sean at Down Goes Brown.  Some pretty compelling arguments  have been made that the notion of the perennial mediocrity of the Leafs is about as firmly grounded in fact as that of unicorn-riding leprachauns (read the piece by daoust at Pension Plan Puppets).

As for the heartless greed of MLSE, consider this: last night, MLSE and the Leafs arranged to collect funds from fans entering the building for relief of those affected by the recent earthquake in Haiti.  Typical, right, MLSE reaching into your wallet for your dollars, all the while cackling maniacally on a giant stack of their own money, right?  Except that the Leafs were matching every dollar collected threefold; that’s right, for every dollar collected from fans attending the game last night, MLSE is chipping in three bucks of their own for the emergency relief fund.   Apparently, the Leafs did the same thing at a Marlies game on the 23rd and a Raptors game on the 24th.   This doesn’t appear to me to be an attempt to grab some cheap publicity;  I wasn’t able to find any reference online to how much the promotion raised, though I did find the newspaper stories and press release announcing MLSE’s intentions to do the fundraiser.  None of the MLSE Twitter feeds make any reference to how much money was raised, according to a search I did earlier tonight.  I’m going to try and contact MLSE tomorrow to see if they can confirm the results.  I’d also like to find out whether that money is going to be funnelled through a charity to which the federal government’s matching program applies – which would effectively convert every dollar handed over by the fans into eight bucks in the hands of relief organizations in the quake zone.

Incidentally, I learned about the Leafs’ efforts in this regard from the big boss himself;  when I entered the Air Canada Centre with my Dad for the game at around 6:20, Brian Burke himself was at the front door, schlepping a coffee can for donations.   Say what you will about the way Burke is running the team;  go ahead and criticize the way his rebuild plan for the hockey club is unfolding.  Whatever you feel about either of those things, you’d have to agree that it takes some flat out balls for the General Manager of a Maple Leafs team that’s on its way to missing the playoffs for a fifth consecutive year to stand right there in the lobby, look the paying customers in the eye as they come through the turnstiles, and ask them to pitch in for an excellent charitable cause.  When I spoke to him, he was careful to tell me that MLSE was kicking in the extra matching funds, and he seemed genuinely interested when I told him about the fundraising efforts that the crew at Pension Plan Puppets recently made.

The Leafs have rightly taken a lot of heat for their performance on the ice this year.  Give them their due when it comes to community responsibility and good corporate citizenship.