An open letter to Toronto Maple Leafs fans

Dear Leafs fans,

I've chosen this particular forum to address you directly as from what I'm told this site is the hub of online "journalism" for the Toronto Maple Leafs.  (Please don't view my use of quotation marks around the word journalism as being denigrating, you should see how we describe what Damien Cox does, har har.)

I know many of you have seen the clip of me on TSN and read the column I wrote for the Toronto Sun taking Brian Burke to task for being in Afghanistan on the first day of free agency.  I'd like to elaborate on some of what I opined, and also respond to some of the criticisms proffered.

One of the first statements I make in my column is that "you don’t, if you’re running the Leafs,if you’re struggling to make a lousy team better, if you haven’t been in the playoffs yet under your watch — even if it is a Canada Day trip for the Canadian troops — go to Kandahar on July 1."  I'll just address this head on.  While I see, if taken out of context, how that might read like I'm placing getting into the playoffs above honouring men and women fighting for my country, I assure you my intent was never to make such an asinine proclamation.  I'm merely pointing out that Canada was born in 1867 and the Leafs last won a Stanley Cup in 1967.  Burke had an entire century to visit
Canadian troops on Canada Day without it negatively impacting the Leafs during a Stanley Cup drought.  

I also ask in my column "how do you explain to Leafs fans when you promise to be busy and active during free agency that you’re absent at precisely the same time."  (I'll ask you now to please disregard the lack of a question mark at the end of that sentence - proper punctuation is secondary to vastly misinformed ranting and ridiculously transparent controversy baiting here at Sun Media.)  Now this I will apologize for.  You see, it wasn't brought to my attention until after the paper was put to bed that Brian Burke's trip was actually to a modern, 21st century military base.  I just assumed that he was in a tent somewhere in the middle of the desert sitting on a camel telling knock-knock jokes or something to the soldiers stationed there.  Again I'll point to my employment with a media company that bends over backwards to portray that part of the world as some sort of medieval hellpit of poor, freedom-hating heathens.  How was I supposed to know they'd have wi-fi?  Now that my ignorance on this topic has been ameliorated, I will freely admit he was probably just as effective working through technological means with his staff of general managers back home as he would have been had he been on the ground in Toronto.

Finally, I'd like to address my saying that the "optics" for Leafs fans of Burke's Kandahar visit are "terrible."  You see, when you spend as much time as I have reading the letters to the editor that are routinely sent in to the Toronto Sun, you start believing that all Torontonians actually think the way the small minority of those who write letters to the Sun do.  It starts to seem plausible, once you've heard your one millionth Fan 590 or TSN Radio call-in, that the majority of people in Toronto are actually so stupid that they'd be unable to summon the proper perspective on this matter.  So to you, silent majority of intelligent Maple Leafs supporters, I whole-heartedly apologize for pretentiously, condescendingly, patronizingly suggesting that you care more about throwing $60 million at Brad Richards for nine frigging years than you do about putting smiles on the faces of soldiers who risk their lives on our behalf on this, our national holiday.

I hope this clears up some misconceptions about what I was trying to say.  And hey, whatever became of Alexander Godynyuk?

Steve Simmons
steve.simmons@sunmedia.ca