John Boruk Comcast Sportsnet Philly (a division of NBC Sports) has ranked the General Manager and Head Coach combinations in the NHL. He's not clear if he is ranking them on their reputation or on their body of work with their current team. I would assume that they are a hybrid because here's the Leafs' ranking:

8. Toronto Maple Leafs (Brian Burke/Ron Wilson) - Burke, like Holmgren, is very aggressive. He drafted the Sedins and Ryan Kesler in Vancouver, traded for Chris Pronger in Anaheim and won the Cup. He has an impressive track record, but a Toronto Maple Leafs resurrection may be his most challenging. He paid handsomely for Phil Kessel, who is finally putting up superstar numbers. His blue-line moves have been questionable. Wilson could never get the Sharks over the hump and in his first three seasons in Toronto, he has yet to make the Leafs into an Eastern Conference contender.

Biggest question mark moving forward: Can the Leafs land a No. 1 center they've desperately needed since the departure of Mats Sundin?

If it's the former then I think he ranked the Leafs' duo a bit high especially considering a couple of GMs and coaches below have more Stanley Cup rings than Burke and Wilson and if it's the latter then he's really gone too high. Although, either way, he's done well with the bottom of the list.

Here's the complete list. Where did he go wrong? What's he got right?

Athletes as a group tend to appear to lack in the personality department. Part of that is because it's easier to hide it than to share it and have to deal with people opining on it (step forward Tim Thomas) and part of it is because when you devote so much time to become among the best in a particular field you sometimes don't have time to develop an actual personality. Joffrey Lupul apparently has no such problems. Whether it's chirping Buffalo for being ugly or chirping Ottawa's fans for not buying tickets or, apparently, playing water games with former teammates:

"As soon as there was a TV timeout, it was just like during a game: You had about 2 and a half minutes to get the job done and get back to your seats and pretend like nothing happened. It was pretty funny," said Hartnell.

The word after the Draft, however, was that Team Chara's Joffrey Lupul used his assistant captaincy to cut the line for the bathroom, specifically in front of his old Flyers teammate Hartnell.

Hartnell denied Lupul pulled rank to get into the men's room. Because ... well ...

"Let's just say we shared the same bathroom at one time. He had to get out there quick. Everyone likes to play swords I guess," he said, with a laugh.

Let's be honest though: if you know enough people that play hockey at a decent level then you've probably hear much worse stories involving urine. Enjoy your imagination running wild!

Links after the jump.

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The Toronto Maple Leafs' woes on the penalty kill over the past few years has been a frequent topic of discussion here at Pension Plan Puppets and virtually everywhere else in Leaf fandom since Ron Wilson became head coach of the team, and probably before then too. While many ideas have been floated about what the reason(s) may be, I decided that I was going to try to collect a bunch of hard data and see if I could put together some kind of well-supported explanation as to what's been going wrong. The results took the form of a comparison between two teams that seemed like they should have had similar PK results, but didn't - the Leafs and the Minnesota Wild.

I decided to divide this into two parts to keep it readable. In Part 1, which I wrote about a week and a half ago, I took a look at the goalies to see if there were any noteworthy differences between the two teams in net. The conclusion that I came to was that the Leafs goalies seemed to be somewhat to blame for the team's poor results. In Part 2, I'm going to be looking at what the other 4 skaters on the PK are doing and see if my initial conclusion about the goalies holds up. If you haven't yet read Part 1, I'd definitely recommend it, since it will provide important context to Part 2 such as "What would drive a person to spend their free time watching video of old Minnesota Wild penalty kills?" Follow me past the jump, where I finally reach a solid conclusion about The Problem With The Leafs PK.

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A little while ago I was in discussion with Cam Charron about Shot Blocking metrics and the problems of normalization, and he directed me to work by Daniel Wagner over at the Score and a recent posting by Derek Zona over at Copper and Blue, which in turn prompted me to dissect the shot blocking abilities of the Leafs roster. I did the actual data analysis over a week ago, but a busy end of semester schedule has prevented me from getting things typed out for your perusal.

One of the main issues with shot blocks is the numbers generally favour players that are on the ice without control of the puck. Skaters with poor puck possession skills tend to climb the rankings of the shot blocking stat sheet - with the most noteworthy example, Ryan Johnson, making an appearance on Coaches Corner before being dumped from the NHL for his less than stellar play.

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For those of you living under a rock, tonight is the All-Star Game Draft and the Leafs are well represented with Captain Dion Phaneuf and the dynamic duo of Joffrey Lupul and Phil Kessel. Last year's draft was none to kind to Phil as jealous former superstars conspired to make him the "Mr. Irrelevant" and the last pick. At least he got a car out of the whole thing, oh and turned into a God. As fun as that was for all involved, we Leafs fan should set about to right the wrongs of history, and the lovely ladies of Ginger Snowflake, Emily and Shelly, have a way to do just that.

As this very community has shown before, social media can be a powerful tool. Don't believe me? We got snakes thrown on the ice at Jobing.com Arena. That's power even money can't buy. So last night Emily and Shelly decided to tap into that power in order to get Phil 'The Thrill' Kessel selected first in tonight's All-Star Draft. And thus the #PickPhilPhirst hashtag was born. Have you Twitter? Then take up the call and attach the hashtags #PickPhilPhirst and #PPP to every tweet you can. Beyond that, why not tweet them at Team Chara Assistant Captain Joffrey Lupul, @JLupul and any other All-Star players who tweet. And let's not forget the media. Bob McKenzier has twitter, so does Nick Kypreos, as well as a lot of fuckers from TSN. Let the whole Twitter world know that tonight we want the All-Stars to:

#PickPhilPhirst #PPP

Judging by most of your blog posts and comments, there seems to be some consensus on what the extension of John-Michael Liles signifies for the Leafs as a team:

First, this move signifies a step towards stabilizing the Leafs' roster. Brian Burke appears poised to make a real run at the Stanley Cup in a few seasons, likely within the term of Phil Kessel's current contract.

Second, with the Leafs set to spend nearly $20M on only six defenders next season, there appears to be an over-commitment in funds to a group of players that struggle mightily to prevent goals. Oh, and that's not including what Keith Aulie and/or Cody Franson will earn.

Third, although I hate the term "log jam", for the time being, the Leafs appear to be carrying 8 NHL defenders (not including Korbinian Holzer), and if Burke is so hell-bent on acquiring a forward with size, it's likely to come at the cost of a defenseman. Knowing Burke's infamous "track record", we can expect a deal to go down a couple weeks before the deadline.

I think that concerns about Liles' ability to produce at a reasonable rate at the age of 35 are well-founded, though as many have already pointed out, if Brian Burke can bring this team a Stanley Cup by then, no one will care in the slightest.

Take your pick from a wide array of blogger's takes after the jump.

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