Thanks to the wonderful world of self-publishing we might someday be subjected to a book by Mr. Howard Berger. It'll take the place of honour in bargain bins and as part of the $1 hardcovers sale at bookstores across the GTA. What the book would contain is pointless to consider...I mean, considering the subject it would be pointless to read what the book contains. It would be infinitely easier to hit up any member of the Barilkosphere and do a search on the hairy-lipped hot air-spewing putz.

To put the proper perspective on his latest column choices Berger has been so bad in the past couple of weeks that people are actually suggesting that he might be worse than Damien Cox. DAMIEN COX! THE FREAKING OMEN! Did any of you think that you would see the day?!?!

His latest piece is a tour de force. I won't go into the Berger Bingo aspects of the article and do not click over. It starts out by suggesting that the Leafs are doing something wrong by trying to trade McCabe and that Fletcher is acting out of character and ruining his reputation around the league (sure) as if they were doing something unique. There are the obligatory potshots at the fans (if I see you at the Cup parade in 2012 Berger I will actually punch you in the mustache. Write that down four eyes) and a stunning display of Berger Logic. Here is all you need to read:

Last summer, I was inundated with a particular ilk of e-mail, informing me that the Leafs’ only problem in 2006-07 was the sub-par goaltending of Andrew Raycroft. “The Leafs greatly reduced the number of opposition shots on goal last season, and would have been much further ahead in the standings if not for Raycroft’s blunders,” was the gist of these messages. The hockey club obviously agreed, as then-GM John Ferguson coughed up a first-round draft choice to San Jose for Vesa Toskala. And, Toskala – after a slow start – proved to be among the elite netminders in the NHL. Why, then, did the Leafs fall from a 9th-place club that missed the Eastern Conference playoffs by one point, to a 12th-place team that missed by a mile-and-a-half? The Raycroft theory was blown to smithereens.

I sense the scapegoat this summer is Paul Maurice – the coach that everyone in Leafs Nation welcomed with open arms, only to throw overboard when the club continued to founder. If that’s the case, then Ron Wilson has one hell of a task in front of him. At best, the 2008-09 Leafs are two-thirds as talented as any Toronto club in recent years. It is a team, however, with a front-line goalkeeper that will steal a game here and there. But, the aggregate will show in the standings, where the Leafs probably won’t surpass 75 points. How, then, will Wilson be received?

It's a long excerpt because I wanted to get the full gist in here in order to save you the need to click over to The Fraud's site. As an asid: I just had to pour a bucket of visine on my eyes to stem the bleeding).

To refresh your memory, here are a couple of posts about Andrew Raycroft and his stats from 2006-2007 and the post here the day that Maurice got fired which lists a plethora of shortcomings on the coach's behalf that torpedoed the season. Oh yeah, and the backup going 2-9-5 sure as shit didn't help things.

Anyway, read that Berger passage again. How stunningly simple is the man? The Leafs' suckage in 2007-2008 vindicates Andrew Raycroft because it proves that the 2006-2007 season was not his fault because a team cannot be terrible two years in a row for two completely different reasons. Put another way, here's how Berger might approach other such puzzles in his life:

• My latest girlfriend Linda left me because she didn't appreciate my stalking here. This just proves that Dolores was delusional when she said our relationship ended because of my cross-dressing.
• My mechanic said that my '83 Datsun broke down because when I hopped the curb in pursuit of some evil Leaf fans I broke my axle. That proves that I was right when I told the other mechanic that my car did not break down because I forgot to make an oil change for 50,000 kms.
• My being labelled as a useless tool by Leaf fans for being unable to present a coherent argument and for relentlessly making unfounded or invented statements proves that people don't think I suck because I lied about Sean Avery and got sued.

Howard Berger is in his element. He works in a place where rumours have Sundin going to a different continent every day run by a charlatan so it makes sense that he would be welcomed with open arms for being such a simpleton. He actually thinks that the Leafs' poor season last year means that it is impossible that the Leafs failed for a different season two years ago. Does anybody else see this? Please tell I am not taking crazy pills. I'd hate to be on the same drug as Berger.