It only really struck me while I was watching Kris Versteeg rap. Burke is either completely unconcerned with chemistry or he is completely unconcerned with what 29 other teams say chemistry should be. The latter of course, with the implication that he's actually the brilliant mad scientist of his generation. 

To be fair, I was primed up with this beauty of a clip, in addition to this beauty, and this beauty. 

But it hit me as Versteeg hit his frightening rap cresendo: why Versteeg? Because he fits with what Burke's been building all along - a gang of misfits, his own New Colossus.  

Maybe I'm way off base here, but I'm going to go ahead and say there's a good chance Versteeg was a bit off an oddball in Chicago. When they looked around the room, knowing 5 or more guys have to go - I'm thinking his name makes its way pretty far down the list of keepers, and character might have had something to do with that. Fergie might have had something to do with that. This is, of course, in the case of Versteeg, my rampant speculation. After all, is there a normal hockey player out there? Do you not have to be a little bit crazy to play this game?

But consider the more obvious, and in some cases, literal, oddballs of the team. Burke's two biggest acquisitions thus far, the new core of the Leafs, have both been pretty well documented cases of internal locker-room drama with their former teams. 

Remember the speculation that Burke would run the undersized, and the Europeans out? Yet Mikhail "I'm going to break open Sergei Kostitsyn like he's a dirty pineapple" Grabovski is still here, even after getting in the face of seasoned vets here in Toronto. To most other GMs, warning bells are going off - Burke rewards him with a generous contract. 

Burke has built this team in his image, a team whose prevailing identity may well galvanize into 'The Unapologetic Misfits'.