Luke Schenn – Heroes in Rehab: the blog

Let There Be Music – And Some Wins, Please

I mentioned on Twitter the other day that I was working on something special in my secret lair. Here it is, in honour of the 2010-2011 Toronto Maple Leafs’ season: The Toronto Maple Leafs Song. (Update 1:12 a.m.: I’ve been trying on and off all night to post a link to the .mp3 file on this blog, but WordPress wants me to learn new swear words instead. So here’s a link to my Tumblr, which apparently has somewhat more delicate ears. )

I can’t believe I have spent as much time as I did over the last few days working on this thing. With Furious G on the way in about eight weeks’ time now, and a busy early 2011 ahead of me work-wise, I have a feeling that the fooling-about time I’ve managed to scrape together over the past couple of evenings may well be the last opportunity I’ll have for a while to focus on ridiculous projects, but I hope everybody in the Barilkosphere enjoys it. If nothing else, have sympathy for the brave men of The Execrables – my PPP Phantasy Puck Team sacrificed their season in the name of this little project. I just couldn’t drag myself away from the production process long enough to pay any attention at all to the fantasy draft, and the autodrafter ended up selecting such luminaries for me as “Marc Savard and his head full of Jell-O”.

Anyway, it all started when I was fooling around, rhyming “Caputi” with “Verbeauty” (the nickname some folks at Pension Plan Puppets have for Kris Versteeg). Before too long, I ended up going Adam Sandler on the Leafs’ lineup.

Enjoy, I hope it gives you a laugh or two.

Here are the lyrics, in case anyone is interested:

THE TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS SONG

Toronto is the centre of the world
Maybe not, but it’s where the Leaf flag gets unfurled
Our teams have missed the playoffs for many, many years
But this group of Leaf players is tops with the Barilkosphere.

‘Cause we’ve got filthy Phil Kessel, he’s Tyler Bozak’s wing
Kulie and Grabbo just keep on attacking
Monster and Jiggy will prove your offence lacking
While Colton Orr and Komisarek will give you a shellacking
Colby Armstrong has a job cause Matt Stajan was sent packing
Let’s hope we’ll all be cheering wins instead of Prozac-ing

We might not still be playing, when May turns into June
But that’s okay we’ll draft our way to the top
(Wait, what?) Too soon!

Tomas Kaberle makes cross-ice pass like you won’t believe
Still some folks dream of draft picks that we might receive
But I say to keep him, he’s talented and handsome
He better be – he’s passing to John Mitchell and Christian Hanson!
Francois Beauchemin, Luca Caputi
Nobody dangles like Kadri and Verbeauty!
Dion Phaneuf will do his Captain’s duty
And ladies tell me that Luke Schenn looks good in a suit-y
Mueller, Blacker and Aulie all seem like good recruitys
Ian White’s moustache is gone now but we’ve got Mike Brown’s fu manchu-ty

It might not be so bad, now that Toskala’s gone
Forget about the last few years, and help me sing this song:

I like Gunnarson’s acuity, hope Sjostrom stays here too-ity
Jeff Finger’s large annuity makes him a Marlie in perpetuity.
Let there be no ambiguity, show the Leafs that you are true-ity
Habs fans have no clue-ity, and Sens fans are sniffing glue-ity
Support your Toronto Maple Leafs, with all your ingenuity
Engage in promiscuity, if you can find someone who’ll do it-y
Just be sure there’s continuity, in your support for white and blue-ity.

Put on your white and blue
Make some noise and ballyhoo
Even if you speak Urdu
And haven’t watched hockey hitherto
Plan to use a big kazoo
Just be sure you follow through
Bang a chair with a wooden shoe
Make some noise for the white and blue
And
Go
Leafs
Go!

Happy Trails, Indeed: Francois Beauchemin is a Maple Leaf

Godzilla1954_01 — Francois Beauchmin Introduced at MLSE Press Conference

The Maple Leafs signed defenceman Francois Beauchemin, late of the Anaheim Ducks, to a 4 year deal today. The deal brings an annual cap hit of about $3.8 million.

I am a huge fan of this signing, for several reasons:

It will be hilarious to watch Montreal’s Lollipop Guild of Cammalleri, Gomez and Gionta spontaneously pee their tiny little pantses when the Leaf defence pairings stomp on to the ice this year. Seriously, the Leafs have more beef on the back end than Oprah, J-Lo and Tomas Holmstrom combined.
The move gives Burke options. He can trade Tomas Kaberle for Jesus Christ and a (top five) first round draft choice or he can move some of the surplus second-tier blueliners now milling about the halls of the ACC, bumping into each other and the walls (such as Stralman, Van Ryn, Finger, Oreskovic, etc.) for more urgently required spare parts: “depth” (i.e. “crappy”) forwards or draft picks.
Whatever the fate of Kaberle, adding a bona fide fearsome defender like Beauchemin on top of the earlier Mike Komisarek signing, the addition of Garnet Exelby (via trade with Atlanta) and the continuing threat of Luke “The Human Eraser” Schenn ensures that no one will come within approximately sixty feet of the Maple Leafs’ crease next season.
This last fact ought to help in the “Monster” derby, the race to sign Swedish goaltender Jonas Gustavsson, which ought to help bring some depth to the goaltending position. This is a polite way of saying that the Leafs’ goaltending sucked donkey balls last year. I love Curtis Joseph dearly, but he did not play well, and an injured Vesa Toskala also turned in a performance best described as “weaksauce”. Why does the signing of Happy Trails Frankie help out in this regard? Ask yourself: if you were a young Swedish lad considering which team to join in order to make your NHL debut, wouldn’t you kind of want to go to a club where the defencemen treat attackers like Godzilla treats Japanese public transportation vehicles?
It’s back to the future, man. Back in the day, when the Leafs were the shit instead of just being “shit”, their style of play was always defined by hard-nosed defence. The Leafs of the 50s and 60s were more about Horton and Stanley than they were about any fancypants offence. It’s how we do things in the Blue & White: crushing hip checks; solid positional play; gutsy shot blocks; pick and shovel, physical defence with a soupçon of elbows, facewashes and general bad-assery. Leaf fans have always been especially taken with the lunchpail brigade, but we are especially enamoured by players who patrol the blueline this way. It has been this way since of Red Horner and Bucko McDonald, through the Horton and Stanley era and more recently to guys like Sylvain Lefebvre, Dmitri Yushkevich and Danny Markov. This tradition is why Luke Schenn will be the captain of your Toronto Maple Leafs by 2012.
I am really looking forward to seeing Beauchemin use his breath weapon to destroy Daniel Alfredsson.

Attaboy Burkie. I see the plan, and I like it. Watching the reaction to the Beauchemin and Komisarek signings in the twitterverse these past few days, I can tell you that your fanbase is definitely loving it too. (Side note: It was absolutely fascinating watching the Beauchemin signing in particular unfold via Twitter today; I saw a tweet that reported the signing, was able to confirm it via Sportsnet, then tweeted about the signing myself and watched as the news spread from person to person via re-tweets. Enjoying the salty tears of disappointment shed by Habs fans despairing of a lost opportunity was especially enjoyable when experienced in real-time. In all seriousness, though, the revolution has come. This is the way we’re going to get our information about things from now on.)

If the Leafs can’t land an elite scoring forward or two through trades this year (most likely immediate candidate for dispatch in this regard: Tomas Kaberle; dark horse trade bait: a rejuvenated and repaired Vesa Toskala), I am content to watch the young forwards like Tlusty, Grabovski, Bozak and Hanson try to make their way in the league. Some, if not most, of them will struggle and/or fail, and the team will similarly struggle to score goals. We may continue to lose games, and lose them often.

But I’m going to really enjoy watching this team play this year. There will be no easy nights for the Leafs’ opposition. Better still, I can see the foundation of the team being built and I can really foresee now, for the first time in a long time (since JFJ got his mitts on the controls, really) a time in the not-too-distant future when this team will be demanding that it be reckoned with as a legitimate Cup contender.

Now THAT’S a Minibus

Spouse and I went for some lunch to a little burger and sub shop in St. George yesterday. I took a picture of the sign out front (depicted in the photograph below):

I’m not sure what utility there is in a mass transit vehicle that is twelve inches in length; but you really can’t beat the price.

The work continues here in Juniorvania; we have completed our work on the eastern front, and have begun focussing our efforts to the north (the front of the house). My entire body aches, and as soon as I am done at the keyboard, I am going to go put a bottle of Motrin in a bowl, pour some milk over the pile of tablets, and eat them like Rice Krispies. I spent the better part of today’s work session cutting out the numerous stumps from various trees and shrubs in the eastern portion of the front garden (most, if not all, of which were cut down long before we got here). As a result of these labours, I am now prepared to swear an affidavit to the effect that the reciprocating saw is, without a shadow of a doubt, the greatest of man’s inventions. The wheel, though sporty and sure to attract a lot of buzz, runs a distant second to the blessed miracle of the reciprocating saw.

On an unrelated note, I must again marvel at Mike‘s diligence and industry: though he is on vacation and travelling afield, he has nonetheless managed to continue to post daily. I think I will excuse myself now and go make myself a dunce cap and sit in the corner for a while; he makes me look very, very bad by comparison.

Tomorrow night, we are off to see the Ticats/Stampeders game at Ivor Wynne. It’s the Cats’ last home game of another lost season. I am getting used to a lot of losing – Spouse and I (courtesy of Joe) were down to the Air Canada Centre in Toronto on Tuesday night to see the Leafs defeated (in a shootout) by the Anaheim (don’t call us Mighty) Ducks. It was an interesting enough game; the Leafs were awful in the first period, so awful that we witnessed one of hockey’s greatest rarities: George Parros scored on a breakaway. No, that’s not a typo. The notably mustachioed habitual pugilist was the benefactor of a communication breakdown between Leaf defencemen Tomas Kaberle and (rookie) Luke Schenn. Still, getting the breakaway is one thing, but actually putting the biscuit in the bucket is quite another. I don’t think George’s mom has ever seen him score on a breakaway, even in road hockey. Anyway, I suspect some choice profanities were uttered by Ron Wilson in the Maple Leaf locker room during the first intermission, as the team was wholly different in the second and third stanzas. Antropov tucked a rebound home in the second to draw the Leafs to within one, and they pressed throughout the third for the tying marker, failing to click on a 38-second 5-on-3 advantage. When the Ducks iced the puck with about a minute to go, though, I turned to Spouse and said I felt the Leafs were going to tie the game. Not fifteen seconds later, they did. Overtime solved nothing, so the game went to a shootout, unfortunately for the Leafs (they’ve been terrible at this aspect of the new NHL since its inception). Curiously, Wilson chose to pull Toskala (who’s 0-2 in shootouts already this year) and insert Curtis Joseph. Tough assignment for Cujo; he had to have had more than a little trouble getting ready to face the first shooter, having sat on the bench and opened the door for his mates for the previous two and a half hours. The first Anaheim shooter? Teemu Selanne (gulp). CuJo whiffed on Teemu’s quick wrist shot and got beaten by a Corey Perry deke, while both Leaf shooters missed the net; game over.

On the Ticat front, as mentioned above, it’s been another lost season. The Ticats were only recently officially eliminated from the (highly egalitarian and scrupulously inclusive) CFL playoffs, but in reality it’s been a foregone conclusion since around the August long weekend. Cat fans are focussing on the new QB in town, Quinton Porter. He’s shown some poise and a great arm while standing in for an injured Casey Printers. Porter seems to have developed some chemistry with his wideouts, something Printers has seemed unable to do. Suddenly, Prechae Rodriguez seems all-World at times and Scott Mitchell has also managed to make some great catches with Porter on the field. The young QB has played well enough to set up a bona fide QB controversy brewing by the time training camp starts next summer. I am hoping to take my camera, and my 800 mm lens to the game tomorrow night. I’d like to try to get some good close-up shots of the players, and try my hand at sports action photography. As for the outcome of the game, I anticipate watching a lot of Stampeder touchdowns tomorrow – as well as Porter has gotten the offence going at times, the Cat defence, especially the secondary, seems prone to coughing up huge passing plays. I am sure that Calgary QB Henry Burris is grinning like a Cheshire cat in anticipation this evening, and has found that he just can’t stop rubbing his hands together.