I do not want to hear about Phil Kessel for Taylor Hall or Tyler Seguin for the rest of my life, despite the fact that I support this trade.

Update:  Toronto’s pick will be the 2nd overall pick in this year’s draft.  Peter Chiarelli and Tyler Seguin were kind of making googly eyes at one another, I thought.  Meanwhile, Taylor Hall’s lips will almost certainly freeze right off within four months of his arrival in Edmonton.

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:

Clancy is an intimidating ghost

of the Leafs  is no doubt a busy man, but  Burkie’s recently been a bit busier than most.  On top of the usual day to day stuff, he’s still dealing with some of the remnants left behind by the previous occupant of the office:  emptying the crayons from the top drawer in the desk, tossing out the half-finished Word Jumbles and comic books scattered throughout the office and executive bathroom, and (most labour intensive of all) scrubbing  the yellow highlighter off the computer screen.

Imagine that as Burke is attending to these various tasks, shuffling things about on the managerial desk, he finds a dented and scratched old coffee can that’s filled with a bunch of dust.  The magic marker/masking tape label has long ago faded and is now illegible.  What Burkie can’t know is that the battered tin, a relic from days gone by, contains the ashes of a deceased player  – unceremoniously stored there years ago after the player’s cremation by a skinflint owner determined to economize wherever possible .

Seeing the tin, Burke is puzzled. He feels sure he would have noticed the disfigured canister on his desk before, but he has not.  He picks it up to examine it, and as he does so, it tumbles from his hands to the floor.  A pile of dust spills on to the plush blue carpet; there is a flash of light and a puff of smoke.   Burke rubs his eyes in disbelief and stares at the apparition that now stands before him in the office.

Something very rare and incredible has happened:  Brian Burke is speechless.

Slightly less unusually, the ghost of a hockey player dead for more than 23 years has spontaneously appeared in a downtown Toronto office building wearing full equipment and a period uniform.

The ghost appears as he did on the night of March 17, 1934:  wearing a bright green sweater with a large shamrock emblazoned across the back where his trademark number 7 ordinarily appeared.  He is carrying a stick and wearing skates. He is pale and very obviously dead.

GHOST: Greetings, Mr. Burke.  I (dramatic pause) am…

BURKE: (recovering his senses)   Great, another stick-wielding zombie  in my office.  Look, I told Chris Chelios just a couple days ago, we’re not looking for any undead players at this time..

GHOST: Silence!  Speak not, mortal.

BURKE: (rising from his chair) What the hell?  Listen pal, nobody talks to me like that, and certainly not in my office.

GHOST: …but…but…look, I said “silence.”  That’s supposed to shut you up;  it’s the first thing they teach you in haunting class.

BURKE: Yeah, well I guess I was away that day.  Say, aren’t you….?

GHOST: Yes, I am.  King Clancy, Mr. Burke.

BURKE: (Stands staring at the ghost, unblinking)

CLANCY: (Stares back,  clears throat)

BURKE: (Continues to stare)

CLANCY: (Shuffles feet, finally shrugs and raises his palms.) What?

BURKE: Well?  Isn’t this the part where you tell me why you’ve  appeared, little fella?

CLANCY: Look, I’m the apparition here, I’m supposed to control this encounter.  Must you be in charge of everything?

BURKE: (still staring)

CLANCY: (under his breath, with resignation) Fine.   (Raising his voice, Clancy gestures in the air with his stick as he speaks dramatically) In 1986 when I passed away, my mortal remains were imprisoned in that outrageous receptacle by that backstabbing cheapskate so-called friend of mine who used to own the team.  With my corporeal remnants consigned to ignominy by that mean-spirited prick of an owner, my spirit could not rest…

BURKE: You’ll have to move this along, buddy.  I’m trying to get my desk cleaned up so I can call Chiarelli back.  I don’t know if you get the Internet where you come from, but I’m working on a trade for this guy named Phil Kessel….

CLANCY: …three wishes.  You get three wishes for freeing my tortured soul.

BURKE: Three wishes, eh?  Hey, lucky me.  Can’t believe I was fortunate enough to be the first to set you free…

CLANCY: Oh, first shmirst.  Ferguson knocked the can over  daily when he was here.  When I told him I was King Clancy, he wanted to know what country I “owned” and whether I could help him find his shoes; he was wearing them at the time.  I explained that I was a ghost;  he told me he is a Libra.  He  is not a Libra.   I tried to raise the subject of the three wishes a bunch of times but he kept getting distracted by the voicemail light flashing on his telephone or a Garfield cartoon.  One day I found him just sitting and staring at an orange juice container;  I asked him why, and he told me the package said “concentrate.” As you can probably imagine, it took several years for us to get to the actual wish-making/granting phase.  When I told him I was going to grant him three wishes, he asked me for (1) a cookie;  (2) another cookie; and (3) some Leafs tickets.  On that 3rd one, I explained to him that he was the General Manager of the Leafs and that he didn’t need tickets to get into the games.  I gave him one more wish.  He wished that he could perform his duties competently, but some things are beyond even my otherworldly powers, so I arranged things for Peddie to fire his ass and just climbed back in the can.

BURKE: That does kind of  help explain some things around here (shuffles cancelled cheque made out to “Andrew Raycroft” to one side of desk).  Three wishes, eh?   Hmmm, let  me think for a second.  Do I have to tell you the wish?

CLANCY: It will suffice, oh truculent one,  if you merely concentrate upon the object of  your desire.

BURKE: You use a lot of pretty flowery language for a guy who turned pro at 17.  Can’t imagine you spent a lot of time in school as a kid, King.  What gives?

CLANCY: (sighs) I’m dead, Brian.  We have a duty to be dramatic when we speak.  Just make your first wish.

BURKE: Hmmm.  What do I really……really….want?

(Far across the country, Kevin Lowe’s genitalia spontaneously detach from his torso and fall to the floor.)

CLANCY: There you go, first wish granted.  That wasn’t so hard, was it?

BURKE: Are you talking about the wish, or…

CLANCY: Mind out of the gutter, Brian.  Second wish?

BURKE: Can I just wish for more wishes, or for my team to win the Cup?

CLANCY: Are you familiar with the concept of a monkey’s paw?

BURKE: Yeah.

CLANCY: Well, let’s put it this way:  I don’t have the paws of a monkey, exactly, but you don’t want to be messing with 75-year old sweat-sopped hockey gloves that have been worn by a corpse for a couple of decades.

BURKE: I did notice a bit of a smell in here….

CLANCY: No, no, that was Nonis.  He’s been eating chili-dogs at Burkie’s Dog House every morning, then coming in here to float a couple of trouser coughs before you get back from lunch.   I think he’s pissed he doesn’t have a concession stand named after him.   He mutters under his breath a lot about the trade for Roberto Luongo while he’s letting them fly in here.

BURKE: Son of a bitch!  Are you telling me my assistant has been surreptitiously farting in my office?

CLANCY: That’s nothing; more than one person has peed in the coffemaker in Richard Peddie’s office.

BURKE: Yeah, I do that all the time.

CLANCY: Brian, everybody else does it when Richard’s NOT in the room.

BURKE: Oh.

CLANCY: Clearly, we digress.  Your second wish?

BURKE: Well, I guess I should use the remaining wishes to achieve some success around here.  Let me see…how could I do that?

CLANCY:  Well, Feschuk and Grange suggest that the team would improve if Leaf fans just stopped coming to the games.

BURKE:  (laughing) Idiots!

CLANCY:  (laughing) Yeah!

(They double over in hysterics, clapping each other on the back and stomping their feet on the floor.  After a time, they dry their tears and resume their conversation.)

BURKE: Okay, okay.  My second wish is “for the Maple Leafs to be a much better team.”

CLANCY: (sighing) Alright.  Jamal Mayers has been waived.

BURKE: That’s it?

CLANCY: Seriously, have you never seen an episode of the Twilight Zone?  You can’t just make broad, sweeping and general wishes like that, or I – as a ghostly apparition – have a moral duty to grant your wish in a way that achieves your objective, but still screws you.

BURKE: How does waiving Mayers screw me?

CLANCY: I could have chosen Stempniak instead;  he’s still on the team.

BURKE: Who?

CLANCY: Never mind.  Look, make a third wish, will you….but do it carefully.  Phrase your wish carefully, with appropriate qualifiying language, or I have to screw you.

BURKE: (makes chin-rubbing gestures and thinking sounds) Okay.  Here it is.  I wanna draft an elite scoring talent, a top-6 kind of prospect to our team;  I want him to be a top 5 draft selection, but I want him to play for us right now, this year – and I don’t want to lose any players from our current roster.

CLANCY: All right – done.  Get Peter Chiarelli on the phone, he’s going to offer you Phil Kessel for your 1st round picks in 2010 and 2011, and your second rounder in 2010.  You’re going to take the deal.  Wish granted.

BURKE: But that’s exactly the transaction I was talking about with Chiarelli!  I was hesitating a bit, because you know on the one hand, Kessel’s only 21 and he’s shown a ton of offensive upside, the kind of young talent that isn’t commonly available on the open market.  On the other hand, though, I was reading this Internet site – this Pension Plan Puppets, and there was this guy who goes by the name mf37 who had me all wrapped around the axle about this.  Jesus Christ, I nearly crapped my pants when I read this:

[W]hat if those picks turn out to be Parise (17) and Getzlaf (19)?

It’s amazing that Kessel scored 36 goals once, but that’s all there is to his game. If he can’t shoot the same way post-surgery, Burke just acquired the next Rob Brown.

Or to Chemmy’s earlier point, this could be the next Cheechoo.

CLANCY: Yeah, I saw that.  Scary stuff.

BURKE: Scary?  You’re a zombie!

CLANCY: Still.

BURKE: Anyway, I was really torn about whether to do this deal.  The way I look at it, getting a young guy like Kessel is kind of like taking next year’s draft pick and putting him on the team now- he’s youthful enough to still count as a prospect.  So it’s almost like you’re not really surrendering a first round pick, so much as taking next year’s pick now.  But draft picks, even first rounders, don’t always pan out.  So you have to ask yourself, essentially, is it worth giving up a 1st round pick, and a second rounder too, basically in order to buy some certainty that the guy you selected is capable of playing and scoring in this league.  Kind of like an insurance policy.  Is that insurance worth that additional first and second round pick?

CLANCY: Don’t forget about the third rounder you gave up to make this deal possible in the first place.

BURKE: (burps nervously) Fucking mf37!  That guy is gonna give me a heart attack, I swear.  Christ, I’m ready to take up the pitchforks and torches after me,  reading shit like that.  Rob fucking Brown, King!

CLANCY: Yeah.  Well, it’s academic now.  You’ve got your wish – the Leafs’ first rounder in 2010 is a 21 year old Phil Kessel.  He scored 36 goals last year and he’s the kind of young, elite scoring prospect that the Leafs haven’t had in the lineup since – well, I don’t wanna say it was back when I was playing, but it was pretty freaking close. You know that the kid can play in this league, and the price you’ve paid for that certainty is a first, second, and third round pick.  You haven’t lost any players from your current roster, so your team has to be considerably improved.  Assuming you get any kind of goaltending in the next couple of years, you should be well positioned – with a couple of judicious additions here and there (and a little bit of luck in terms of the development of your other youngsters) to open a window in which you will be competitive for the Stanley Cup.  Of course, the draft picks you gave up could turn out to come back to haunt you – there are three chances that somebody else is gonna draft the 2015 league MVP on your dime.

BURKE: Yeah, that’s pretty much the way it is.

CLANCY: You gotta take some risks to get a reward, right?  You know, back in my day, I was the shit;  I was playing for Ottawa when Conn Smythe bet a crapload of money on a race horse – at 200-1 odds -  and he won the bet.  He used his winnings to buy my contract.  200-1 odds!  Now that’s a risk.

BURKE: Gimme a break.  Seriously, what are the chances that race wasn’t fixed?

CLANCY: Fixed?!?  Scandal!  Opprobrium!

BURKE: There you go with your dead guy words again.  So this Kessel trade is a done deal now?

CLANCY: Yeah.  Pick up the phone.  Chiarelli is faxing you the papers right now.

BURKE: (pause)  So, straight up, King.  Did you screw me over Monkey’s Paw style or no?

CLANCY: (Smiles…and slowly dissolves.)

I can’t let the NHL playoffs pass without observing that it’s a shame that Boston defenceman Andrew Alberts didn’t play for a Canadian-based team, and about twenty years ago.  The reasons for this are, in my opinion, obvious – provided you spent some time in Canada during the 1980s, owned or had access to a television in that same time period, and currently have space available in your brain’s memory banks to devote to useless ephemera.  Useless ephemera, you say?  Sounds like the intellectual wheelhouse for HiR:tb…

If Alberts played in Canada back in ye olde 1980s, there is no question in my mind that nary a game would have gone by without an “Albert” (no “s”) chant getting started at some point.  Alberts wouldn’t have needed to play particularly well, he wouldn’t need (necessarily) to be on the ice, he might not even need to be dressed for the game;  Canadian fans would have gotten a kick out of having a legitimate opportunity to chant this guy’s name.  Why?  Because of this ad (which, incidentally, was pretty much ubiquitous in the Great White North about 25 years ago):

This commercial was wildly popular back in the day, despite – or maybe because of – the sappy script, the cheap sentimentality and the clumsy acting.  There is of course, also an obvious and glaring flaw:  why the hell is Albert’s given name on the back of his jersey at the end of the ad?  How did something so deeply flawed become such a widespread cultural phenomenon?  Some mysteries will endure forever, I suppose.

Anyway, I know that Canadian fans would have been chanting for Alberts, because the “Albert” chant at the end of that spot actually did make an appearance at some games back in the late 80′s, despite the complete absence of anyone on either team with such a surname.

Stick with me for a moment, because I need to flesh out some of the cultural background for this story.   When the Leafs were truly awful in those latter Ballard years, the frustration of a fanbase that is now (unfortunately) called “Leaf Nation” was overflowing.   Keep in mind that back then, we The Disappointed did not have this public spleen-venting outlet you kids call The Internet, because Al Gore hadn’t got around to inventing it yet.  There was no Barilkosphere within which to proclaim loudly our anger, restlessness or dissatisfaction.  So we did things like showing up at Leaf games with paper grocery bags on our heads¹.   Expressive grocery-related haberdashery was all well and good, but chief among the limited and primitive expressive mediums of sports fans at this time was The Chant.  The Chant is essentially the same idea as The Heckle – a shouted barb or witticism, occasionally devolving into mere profanity – but syntactically simplified (to permit the synchronization of many mouths) and with a super-added element of loose mob-style organization (to give it superior moral authority).

Thus did it happen, and not infrequently, that as the Leafs were once again thoroughly outclassed on home ice by their opposition of the day, Leaf fans from time to time expressed their angst by chanting “Albert!  Albert!  Albert!”  This was truly a watershed moment in the evolution of chanting:  highly constrained by the inherent technical imperatives of the short-form structure of the medium, chant-makers had historically struggled to bring depth and intellectual maturity to their work.  Consider, for example, the innate challenges in bringing lyrical beauty or a deeper truth to the world through an expressive form traditionally used to publicize the onset of a toga party, to encourage the commencement of a food fight, or to recommend the drunken public display of female breasts.  Yet the “Albert” chant succeeded where so many others had failed:  making use of an ironic and humorous reference to a shared cultural externality, Leaf fans made it clear that they needed – nay, demanded -  a real life hero, someone like Albert, to lace ‘em up for the Blue and White.

——————-

¹That sentence is so dated culturally, it’s the lexical equivalent of an archaeological dig in Egypt.  For example, going to the game with a bag on your head made reference, in a way, to the Unknown Comic.  Also:  paper grocery bags were then still the industry standard, not the enviro-retro-chic that they are now (suitably recycled, of course).

Of course, Green’s play was overshadowed by that of certain a hairy Russian force of nature. What a play Ovechkin made on the go-ahead goal; he blocked the point shot of his constant tormentor Timmonen, then immediately broke for open ice between the two Flyers defencemen, instinctively knowing that the partially blocked shot would surely be recovered by Kozlov and that he had an opportunity for a breakaway – but only if he didn’t hesitate. Ovechkin took two lightning quick steps towards centre and was eight feet past a now very alarmed Timmonen and the much maligned Kozlov hit Ovechkin on the tape with a beautiful pass as Ovie blazed up the middle of the ice. Everybody in the rink, including Martin Biron, knew that Alex the Gr8 would not be denied, and moments later the Caps had taken a very improbable lead.

The Philadelphia fans had barely resumed breathing through their open mouths when, for a change, it was the Flyers who took a “too many men” penalty (really, Gabby – three of those in the last couple of games is waaaaay too many). On the ensuing powerplay, Ovechkin was served up another beautiful pass, this one from Brooks Laich and Ovechkin hammered that thing so hard, everybody seated in the stands behind the goal ought to immediately drive to the nearest church, synagogue, mosque or temple and thank the resident deity or deities that Ovie’s shot bulged the twine, because if that puck had hit the glass it would have killed everybody in the first six rows. Do you think that game will shut the TV monkeys up about Ovechkin needing to “step up”? Probably not; five’ll get you ten that’s still the main theme harped upon by the flapping gums – “monster” or not.

Alex’s interview on TSN after the game was awesome; it was so obvious to me that he wanted to strap the blades on and play Game Seven RIGHT NOW. This guy is Rasputin on skates – aside from the near spooky physical resemblance, there is the matter of Mr. Ovechkin’s superhuman constitution to be addressed. He played a shift in the second period that lasted well over two minutes of concerted attack. The Flyers may well need a group of Russian assassins and some cyanide-laced confections to take down their hirsute nemesis, because neither the substantial hits applied within the rules by Richards, Umberger and others, nor the straight up punches to the back of the head administered by the ever-classy Derian Hatcher have done the trick, and the hitherto-successful Philadelphia scheme for Ovechkin prophylaxis by the constant application of major doses of Timmonen has run its course. Ovie has figured out how to get away from that coverage, as evidenced by the six shots he had on goal in Game Five and the further seven (not to mention two goals) he added tonight.

This is going to be a great Game Seven.

Can I ask what the hell Pierre McGuire was babbling on about when he kept referring to Martin Biron’s “active glove”? Umm, Pierre, that’s just stupid. No goalie has a “passive” glove. They catch stuff with them. They’re called “trappers” and “blockers” for a reason; these items of equipment represent an active concept. Anyone who stands there just waiting to get hit, is… well, Andrew Raycroft does that. Perhaps that’s a bad example, but you get my meaning.

As for the other game this evening, I didn’t see much of the Habs/Bruins Game Seven. I did see Game Six of that series and much of Game Five too. One thing I don’t understand is the media babble about Carey Price supposedly having come apart at the seams. The so-called experts point to the ten goals surrendered by the Habs ‘tender in those two games and lazily conclude that Price played poorly. Now I’m no Habs fan, but I do know a classy and talented kid when I see one – Spouse and I were lucky enough to see almost all of Price’s games with the Hamilton Bulldogs during last year’s Calder Cup winning run – and Price is most certainly getting a bum rap from the wags on that one. Yes, he coughed up the puck late in Game Five to put the B’s ahead, and yes, he looked rattled after he made that rookie mistake, but none of the five that got past him on Saturday night in Game Six could be called soft goals. The pundits ought to have been asking where the defensive coverage and veteran leadership was on the Habs bench; how, it might fairly be asked, were the Bruins allowed to continually come back and score throughout the third period? With the series on the line, the Habs got a questionable effort from the Kovalev unit, for example, which was a -3 on the evening. I do not recall hearing much mention being made of that fact; it’s too easy, I guess, to point the finger at the goalie. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for whatever kind of Habs-related misery there can be, but it’s the job of those in the media to correctly identify the reasons why the Habs suck, not to pin the whole shootin’ match on  a twenty year old rookie who was playing in the WHL last year at this time.