3-11-5, This is Canada's Team?

Caption is kind of weird, considering Carkner didn’t run, and in fact was mucking it up with Orr again later in the game.

Orr beat the hell out of him, though.

Wait your turn!

while I go beat up SNES fans.

we can do it, we’ve had 10 game winning streaks before!

Hes got to be back for the Carolina game right?

I know Toskala hasn’t played poorly and has actually been quite decent the last 3 games, but the team looks lost in front of him.

Call all three up.

The college line needs to reunite.

Something to say – ACCOUNTABILITY!

I would assume it’s quite obvious to all of us by now that all this pre-season talk of “accountability” and earning things and nothing being handed to anyone was just so much PR bullshit.

Somewhere, Burke fiddles.

blurr’s on vacation.

That’s exactlly what I wondered over on my blog today.

The Leafs have 9 pending openings on their roster and all of five prospects in the system. Even if 80% of the Leafs prospects turn out, that produces all of four roster players.

UFAs kill your cap situation and remove any flexibility from the roster.

I have no idea, even over the medium term, how the Leafs crawl out of this hole.

I have an interesting (possible) theory on the Marlies situation. Hockey and baseball are the two sports right now where prospects are generally worth more than they will be when in the top league. What if Burke is intentionally keeping guys like Stalberg and Tlusty down (who are arguably NHL ready) because once they actually get some time in the NHL, their trade value will drop. If Burke has designs on adding another premier offensive player (via a trade), he will need to include some decent prospects in return. By keeping these guys at a level of hockey where they can succeed (or even dominate), it might get rival GM offices thinking about these guys as future top 6 talent. It makes their trade value, in all likelihood, higher than it would be if they were currently in the NHL.

I think Burke/Wilson were obviously expecting progression, or at least not regression, from last year’s play from guys like blake, stajan, stemps, poni, kulemin, etc. MF37’s definitely right that they’ve got their work cut out for them trying to turn this team around.

I will respectfully disagree that drafting is the only way to find talent and achieve success though. If you look at the post-lockout cup winners, it’s been a bit of a mixed bag.

Carolina and Anaheim each only had 5 or 6 guys they drafted on their team when they won the Cup. Sure, it was Staal/Cole and Perry/Getzlaf, but the point is you only need one or two high-performing young drafted players (playing above their contract), not a full team of them. Anaheim actually had a lot of players that were undrafted that they ended up signing as free agents (Penner, Kunitz, Macdonald). And both teams had several players that were integral to their success that they either traded for or signed as free agents (Williams, Stillman, Recchi, Brind A’mour, Cullen, Weight; Selanne, Macdonald, Niedermayer, Pronger, Giguere, Beauchemin).

Detroit’s cup-winning team was almost completely devoid of first round picks – Niklas Kronwall I think was the only one. Detroit is the only team that’s had fewer first-round picks than Toronto the last 15 years (9 vs 11).

Pittsburgh had Crosby and Malkin. Those both came via lottery drafts. Planning to suck then hoping to win the draft lottery is not a business plan. It’s desperation. Chicago is a completely different team if the lottery for the drafts with Kane and Toews didn’t go the way they did (they moved up 5th to 1st to get Kane).

Just as importantly, if drafting really was the only way to succeed, why have so many teams like Phoenix, Florida, Columbus, Nashville, etc had so little success?

But like I told Mattblack, the lone bright, bright spot this year is the reason that all of this losing is that much worse.

It’s like a g-ddamned Greek tragedy

that he’s tiring out faster because he’s not used to an NHL schedule? In the SEL they only play 55 regular season games over a 6 month span from Sept to Mar while NHL is 82 games over a 6 month span from Oct to Apr

If Kessel scores 30+ every year, $5.4M is an abosulte steal of a contract.

I can’t remember seeing a team’s D get ravaged by injuries like theris has been. It’s unbelievable.

Who said he should have declined? Just that crosschecking him after a clean hit was bullshit.

San Jose only has 11 players under contract next year, and they already have $35M committed.

Pavelski and Setoguchi will be looking for raises, and Nabokov and Blake are UFAs too. They’ll eat up a big chunk of that room, and then they need to fill out a line-up.

I wouldn’t be shocked if San Jose has to let Marleau walk. And I don’t want to overpay for either of the other two.

so many players on the roster, who do you expose to waivers?

that’s just awesome

Yeah I bet accepting the invite to walk into a stadium during the Olympics took up a whole bunch of his time.

very important

“laying with abandon”
he he
A Tlusty faux pas.

Also, the Senators needed the Leafs fans to come just to get to the 17400 total they managed to get…so I wonder how many Sens fans there actually WERE at the game. There can’t have been too many ;)