Something from Nothing: Remembering the 2009, 10, and 11 Opening Day Rosters

Exelby and Wallin take on - oh who are we kidding - get burned by Claude Giroux. Terrible line matching at home aside, we lost, 2-0. 

(April 6, 2010 - Photo by Abelimages/Getty Images North America)

Sometimes it's nice to think about the history of a team. To look at the season a couple years back, to think about the players that have donned the blue and white before the current ones, to remember the anticipation of finally putting into practice what three months of offseason on opening day. We all love the history posts we get around here; a chance to think about the Brodas and the Bowers instead of the Raycrofts and the Pogges (they all wore number 1, if you're wondering).

This is not one of those posts.

This, instead, is about just how bloody miserable the Leafs teams were on their home openers from the past three under Brian Burke. He joined us in November of 2008, and the summer of 2009 was his first chance to really work on building a team on paper. So with that, I'd like to present to you the Leafs' rosters on opening night from the 2009-10 season, the 2010-11 season, and the upcoming 2011-12 season, and those players' point per game values from their previous seasons of performance. Players who have no previous NHL season performance are marked as a 0 - both NHL equivalencies don't apply to some of these players because of their ages, and because, well quite frankly, that's what they were worth. 

The starting roster for the 2009-2010 Toronto Maple Leafs:

Total PPG for the team from their previous season, including the 7th D man and 13th forward: 6.897. From the forwards: 4.897. From the defense: 2. 

A summer comes and goes. Your starting roster for the 2010-2011 Toronto Maple Leafs:

Total PPG from the team's 2009-10 season: 6.49. From the forwards: 4.37. From the defense: 2.12. 

And here we are now - the summer of 2011, with the following roster expected to be opening the 2011-12 season:

Total ppg from the 2010-11 season: 8.36. From the forwards, 6.20, and from the defense, 2.16.

This isn't the best predictor - hell, it's barely even a good metric of anything (I didn't include a GP minimum, and Bozak's .73 PPG rookie "season," which no one expected him to sustain, counts the same as his .39 sophomore season). But as I did a spit take reading that John "seventh round pick" Mitchell played 20 minutes in the 2009 home opener, it reminded me that when Burke started here, our cupboards weren't just bare - our table, chest, and whatever other storage-related metaphor you'd like to use were also shockingly devoid of established talent.