![\"Clancy](\"http:\/\/heroesinrehab.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/Clancy-279x300.jpg\" "\\"Clancy\\"")
Clancy is an intimidating ghost<\/p><\/div>\n
of the Leafs\u00a0 is no doubt a busy man, but\u00a0 Burkie’s recently been a bit busier than most.\u00a0 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:\u00a0 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\u00a0 the yellow highlighter off the computer screen.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 The magic marker\/masking tape label has long ago faded and is now illegible.\u00a0 What Burkie can’t know is that the battered tin, a relic from days gone by, contains the ashes of a deceased player\u00a0 – unceremoniously stored there years ago after the player’s cremation by a skinflint owner determined to economize wherever possible .<\/p>\n
Seeing the tin, Burke is puzzled. He feels sure he would have noticed the disfigured canister on his desk before, but he has not.\u00a0 He picks it up to examine it, and as he does so, it tumbles from his hands to the floor.\u00a0 A pile of dust spills on to the plush blue carpet; there is a flash of light and a puff of smoke.\u00a0\u00a0 Burke rubs his eyes in disbelief and stares at the apparition that now stands before him in the office.<\/p>\n
Something very rare and incredible has happened:\u00a0 Brian Burke is speechless.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The ghost appears as he did on the night of March 17, 1934:\u00a0 wearing a bright green sweater with a large shamrock emblazoned across the back where his trademark number 7 ordinarily appeared.\u00a0 He is carrying a stick and wearing skates. He is pale and very obviously dead.<\/p>\n
GHOST:<\/strong> Greetings, Mr. Burke.\u00a0 I (dramatic pause<\/em>) am…<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> (recovering his senses<\/em>)\u00a0\u00a0 Great, another stick-wielding zombie\u00a0 in my office.\u00a0 Look, I told Chris Chelios just a couple days ago, we’re not looking for any undead players at this time..<\/p>\n GHOST: <\/strong> Silence!\u00a0 Speak not, mortal.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> (rising from his chair<\/em>) What the hell?\u00a0 Listen pal, nobody talks to me like that, and certainly not in my<\/em> office.<\/p>\n GHOST:<\/strong> …but…but…look, I said “silence.”\u00a0 That’s supposed to shut you up;\u00a0 it’s the first thing they teach you in haunting class.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Yeah, well I guess I was away that day.\u00a0 Say, aren’t you….?<\/p>\n GHOST:<\/strong> Yes, I am.\u00a0 King Clancy, Mr. Burke.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> (Stands staring at the ghost, unblinking<\/em>)<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> (Stares back,\u00a0 clears throat<\/em>)<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> (Continues to stare<\/em>)<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> (Shuffles feet, finally shrugs and raises his palms.<\/em>) What?<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Well?\u00a0 Isn’t this the part where you tell me why you’ve\u00a0 appeared, little fella?<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> Look, I’m the apparition here, I’m supposed to control this encounter.\u00a0 Must you be in charge of everything?<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> (still staring<\/em>)<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> (under his breath, with resignation<\/em>) Fine.\u00a0\u00a0 (Raising his voice, Clancy gestures in the air with his stick as he speaks dramatically<\/em>) 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.\u00a0 With my corporeal remnants consigned to ignominy by that mean-spirited prick of an owner, my spirit could not rest…<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> You’ll have to move this along, buddy.\u00a0 I’m trying to get my desk cleaned up so I can call Chiarelli back.\u00a0 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….<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> …three wishes.\u00a0 You get three wishes for freeing my tortured soul.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Three wishes, eh?\u00a0 Hey, lucky me.\u00a0 Can’t believe I was fortunate enough to be the first to set you free…<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> Oh, first shmirst<\/em>.\u00a0 Ferguson knocked the can over\u00a0 daily <\/em>when he was here.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I explained that I was a ghost;\u00a0 he told me he is a Libra.\u00a0 He\u00a0 is not<\/em> a Libra.\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 One day I found him just sitting and staring at an orange juice container;\u00a0 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.\u00a0 When I told him I was going to grant him three wishes, he asked me for (1) a cookie;\u00a0 (2) another cookie; and (3) some Leafs tickets.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I gave him one more wish.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> That does kind of\u00a0 help explain some things around here (shuffles cancelled cheque made out to “Andrew Raycroft” to one side of desk<\/em>).\u00a0 Three wishes, eh? \u00a0 Hmmm, let\u00a0 me think for a second.\u00a0 Do I have to tell you the wish?<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> It will suffice, oh truculent one,\u00a0 if you merely concentrate upon the object of\u00a0 your desire.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> You use a lot of pretty flowery language for a guy who turned pro at 17.\u00a0 Can’t imagine you spent a lot of time in school as a kid, King.\u00a0 What gives?<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> (sighs<\/em>) I’m dead<\/em>, Brian.\u00a0 We have a duty to be dramatic when we speak.\u00a0 Just make your first wish.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Hmmm.\u00a0 What do I really……really<\/em>….want?<\/p>\n (Far across the country, Kevin Lowe’s genitalia spontaneously detach from his torso and fall to the floor<\/em>.)<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> There you go, first wish granted.\u00a0 That wasn’t so hard, was it?<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Are you talking about the wish, or…<\/p>\n CLANCY: <\/strong> Mind out of the gutter, Brian.\u00a0 Second wish?<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Can I just wish for more wishes, or for my team to win the Cup?<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> Are you familiar with the concept of a monkey’s paw<\/a>?<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> Well, let’s put it this way:\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> I did notice a bit of a smell in here….<\/p>\n CLANCY: <\/strong> No, no, that was Nonis.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 I think he’s pissed he doesn’t have a concession stand named after him.\u00a0\u00a0 He mutters under his breath a lot about the trade for Roberto Luongo while he’s letting them fly in here.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Son of a bitch!\u00a0 Are you telling me my assistant has been surreptitiously farting in my office?<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> That’s nothing; more than one person has peed in the coffemaker in Richard Peddie’s office.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Yeah, I do that all the time.<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> Brian, everybody else does it when Richard’s NOT in the room.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Oh.<\/p>\n CLANCY: <\/strong> Clearly, we digress.\u00a0 Your second wish?<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Well, I guess I should use the remaining wishes to achieve some success around here.\u00a0 Let me see…how could I do that?<\/p>\n CLANCY<\/strong>:\u00a0 Well, Feschuk and Grange suggest<\/a> that the team would improve if Leaf fans just stopped coming to the games.<\/p>\n BURKE<\/strong>:\u00a0 (laughing<\/em>) Idiots!<\/p>\n CLANCY<\/strong>:\u00a0 (laughing<\/em>) Yeah!<\/p>\n (They double over in hysterics, clapping each other on the back and stomping their feet on the floor.\u00a0 After a time, they dry their tears and resume their conversation<\/em>.)<\/p>\n BURKE<\/strong>: Okay, okay.\u00a0 My second wish is “for the Maple Leafs to be a much better team.”<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> (sighing<\/em>) Alright.\u00a0 Jamal Mayers has been waived.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> That’s it?<\/p>\n CLANCY: <\/strong> Seriously, have you never seen an episode of the Twilight Zone<\/em>?\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> How does waiving Mayers screw me?<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> I could have chosen Stempniak instead;\u00a0 he’s still on the team.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Who?<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> Never mind.\u00a0 Look, make a third wish, will you….but do it carefully.\u00a0 Phrase your wish carefully, with appropriate qualifiying language, or I have to screw you.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> (makes chin-rubbing gestures and thinking sounds) Okay.\u00a0 Here it is.\u00a0 I wanna draft an elite scoring talent, a top-6 kind of prospect to our team;\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> All right – done.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 You’re going to take the deal.\u00a0 Wish granted.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> But that’s exactly the transaction I was talking about with Chiarelli!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Jesus Christ, I nearly crapped my pants when I read this<\/a>:<\/p>\n [W]hat if those picks turn out to be Parise (17) and Getzlaf (19)?<\/p>\n It\u2019s amazing that Kessel scored 36 goals once, but that\u2019s all there is to his game. If he can\u2019t shoot the same way post-surgery, Burke just acquired the next Rob Brown.<\/p>\n Or to Chemmy\u2019s earlier point, this could be the next Cheechoo.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> Yeah, I saw that.\u00a0 Scary stuff.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Scary?\u00a0 You’re a zombie!<\/p>\n CLANCY:<\/strong> Still.<\/p>\n BURKE:<\/strong> Anyway, I was really torn about whether to do this deal.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 So it’s almost like you’re not really surrendering a first round pick, so much as taking next year’s pick now.\u00a0 But draft picks, even first rounders, don’t always pan out.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Kind of like an insurance policy.\u00a0 Is that insurance worth that additional first and second round pick?<\/p>\n