RealGM

http://thestar.blogs.com/thespin/2008/0 ... .html#more

I've been quietly seething for a little while, distracting myself with the basketball playoffs and the new baseball season, but Cox's latest blurb forced me to finally break my silence.

The Leafs are atrocious as an organization and as a team, so much in fact that I feel I need to write it out instead of just implicitly recognizing it like every other hockey fan with half a brain.

All this bull$h!t about the GM search and Sundin re-signing and prospects and Burke as the saviour ... I have no faith in anything relating to the Leafs and improvement. Somehow, and I don't understand how because it literally defies my basic cognitive capacities, a$$face Peddie is in firm control of the super-management selection committee. While lining the pockets of his employers (ooh, that's how), he's watched a basketball franchise disintegrate until he had his puppet strings cut and he's watching the Leafs plummet, face-first, into the ground repeatedly, gradually digging itself a pit filled only with despair and Peddie's semen. Instead of doing everyone a favour and getting pushed into the shadows where he can pursue his underhanded deeds in secret, he's wormed his way back into the spotlight, preserving his status. I can only hope as this trainwreck of a professional sports team continues to plow through heaps and mounds of feces that he is, at some point, held accountable.

Seriously: organizing a super-management team "for the ages"? Are the sort of ambitious and respected names wanted for this 'team' (aka a convenient but ham-fisted placeholder for Brian Burke) going to sign a contract that effectively gives them no power? If I was a former GM of an NHL franchise, I probably wouldn't want some truncated, appendage of a position. And if they DID want that, would that sort of willing-to-take-a-backseat personality be one a "for the ages" team wants on it? If you answer yes, you're an idiot because it's a rhetorical question and I hate you because you're deliberately antagonizing me.

Also, why would Sundin want to come back to more Peddie-phile? I don't know that dude but he gives me the creeps. That's right - the creeps. Sundin can feel it, too. Oh and he'd also have to play on a team with no. chance. of. winning. Period.

So - the Leafs can't sign a GM because they've made absurd promises they can't keep and don't want to beg for Burke through the media (which seems like a better option at this point). They can't get their captain to re-sign because he understandably hates the direction this sham of a franchise is headed. And the team currently on the ice has a terrible mix of marginally talented young players and veterans with contracts larger than their on-ice contributions should merit.

The Leafs are not a sinking ship. They've already sunk. Now they need a saviour, someone to resurrect their corroded, fish-infested shell. Perhaps Brian Burke is our angel of mercy. Perhaps he can slay Peddie at long last. But, I doubt it.

Typical Leafs. They've got tunnel vision when it comes to Burke and the rest of the hockey world knows it. We lost another solid candidate in Doug Armstrong the other day and this will continue.

My fear is the anticipation for Burke will undoubtedly lead to disappointment. All this build up and he won't deliver or somehow someone else will swoop in and take him away while the Leafs are stuck in perpetual motion of suckitude.

I know I'm in the minority and I may get flamed for this, but I had no problem with the direction and decision making of Ferguson. Some of his trades and signings (Raycroft & Kubina in particular) have turned out to be bad, but hindsight is 20/20 and I truly believe that AT THE TIME they were all good decisions to make.

Raycroft: Belfour was on the way out and we had 2 stellar goaltending prospects in the system with no starter. Raycroft was a former ROY and needed a change of scenery.

Tucker/McCabe/Kubina: All these contracts were market rate (including NTC) and these players would have earned it elsewhere, leaving this team with major holes. Tucker's deal is a bargain if we make the playoffs.

Lindros/Allison: Both players took major paycuts and signed with the Leafs for next to nothing. Risky moves with injuries, but any GM would have made these signings at the time.

Blake: 40-goal scoring winger to pair with Sundin. Unfortunately, Blake was struck with leukemia, something JFJ could never predict.

Drafting: Tlusty, Kulemin, Pogge, Rask, Stralman, Vorobiev, Earl and Ruegsegger have all been great picks and he even found some "diamonds in the rough" in the later rounds.

juucer wrote:I know I'm in the minority and I may get flamed for this, but I had no problem with the direction and decision making of Ferguson. Some of his trades and signings (Raycroft & Kubina in particular) have turned out to be bad, but hindsight is 20/20 and I truly believe that AT THE TIME they were all good decisions to make.

Raycroft: Belfour was on the way out and we had 2 stellar goaltending prospects in the system with no starter. Raycroft was a former ROY and needed a change of scenery.

Tucker/McCabe/Kubina: All these contracts were market rate (including NTC) and these players would have earned it elsewhere, leaving this team with major holes. Tucker's deal is a bargain if we make the playoffs.

Lindros/Allison: Both players took major paycuts and signed with the Leafs for next to nothing. Risky moves with injuries, but any GM would have made these signings at the time.

Blake: 40-goal scoring winger to pair with Sundin. Unfortunately, Blake was struck with leukemia, something JFJ could never predict.

Drafting: Tlusty, Kulemin, Pogge, Rask, Stralman, Vorobiev, Earl and Ruegsegger have all been great picks and he even found some "diamonds in the rough" in the later rounds.

Its the fact that he traded away his top prospect in the system for a goalie coming off one of the worst seasons of any goalie in the NHL and over in europe. He did a horrible job of maximising his best young asset by basically giving away Rask for 25 cent on the dollar. Raycroft was never seen as a highly touted prospect or ever expected to be much in the NHL so Im sure many people would have rather looked at the full picture instead of one season (which is turning out to look like it was a fluke more then anything).

I dont see how making the playoffs would make any difference to Tuckers salary if he only scores 10 goals a season and becomes just as much of a liablity out there as a positive. Are you trying to imply that once the postseason started he was going to become some possesed beast and all the sudden step his game up so much from his dissapointing regular season? If so, thats totally speculation on your part. There was no need to spend so much money on the blueline especially when 15 million was allocated to just three guys. There was no need to sign Kubina for that amount when there was much better routes to go financially.

Jason Allison has yet to find a job in the NHL after his gig with us. How can you say any gm would sign him at that price if he can no longer find work?

No it was silly signing a 34 year old to a contract that pays him 5 million a season when hes only shown once that hes a legit goal scorer in this league and that was in a contract year. Dont try to say last seasons effort was due to cancer. He ended the season like 5th in the league in shots and said thruout the season he felt fine physically. If the cancer was really a problem I doubt he would have been getting that many scoring chances. Face it, it was a bad signing and only going to get worse as he gets older and starts to decline.

how can you say that Pogge, Earl, ruegsegger, Tlusty, Kulemin were great picks considering they have proven nothing in the NHL. Sure they might have generated some hype and therefore it makes you think they were good picks in relation to where they were drafted but until they actually play in the NHL and prove that they can play and actually stay in the league you cant say they were good picks.

ill add some horrible moves he made.

-Trading Bell and 2nd round pick for Perrault
-Turned down #2 overall pick for #13+Steen
-Turned down Pronger for Kaberle/Steen
-Ken Klee for Suglobov
-4th round pick for Luke Richardson
-Jarko Immonen & 1st round pick for Brian Leetch
-Alexander Khavanov signing

juucer wrote:I know I'm in the minority and I may get flamed for this, but I had no problem with the direction and decision making of Ferguson. Some of his trades and signings (Raycroft & Kubina in particular) have turned out to be bad, but hindsight is 20/20 and I truly believe that AT THE TIME they were all good decisions to make.

Raycroft: Belfour was on the way out and we had 2 stellar goaltending prospects in the system with no starter. Raycroft was a former ROY and needed a change of scenery.

Tucker/McCabe/Kubina: All these contracts were market rate (including NTC) and these players would have earned it elsewhere, leaving this team with major holes. Tucker's deal is a bargain if we make the playoffs.

Lindros/Allison: Both players took major paycuts and signed with the Leafs for next to nothing. Risky moves with injuries, but any GM would have made these signings at the time.

Blake: 40-goal scoring winger to pair with Sundin. Unfortunately, Blake was struck with leukemia, something JFJ could never predict.

Drafting: Tlusty, Kulemin, Pogge, Rask, Stralman, Vorobiev, Earl and Ruegsegger have all been great picks and he even found some "diamonds in the rough" in the later rounds.

Thats a pretty brave post in view of whats happened but JFJ did make some good moves but he also made some stupid ones, like not re upping Nieuendyk and Roberts and as far as Blake is cocerned, I'm not sure about signing a player of his age for so much for so long regardless of his illness and he made a lot of other bone headed moves...

Drafting has more to do with the Leaf scouting than JFJ's acumen at picking good prospects...

Replacing Quinn with Maurice was also a mistake and one that cost us, maybe the last two years of making the play-offs...

He also had a terrible Trading record and I'm hard pressed to think of one that was any good, most of his trades involved prospects and draft choices that have put us into this rebuilding mode and has cost us dearly going forward, like the deadline deal for Perreault, for Bell and and a draft pick...

In his defense upper management was pulling the strings and was probably a factor in some of his miscues but over all he was not a good GM...

[quote="Tor-Rap-Tor"][/quote]

Im fine with the toskala trade. He did well on that one.

The reality is that you can almost always make a excuse/case for a single move at the time (im sure bias fans could make good case's for why alex daigle was picked #1) but that doesnt mean its a good move. At the end of the day all that counts is results and your results then determine if it was a good move or not.

some of JFJ moves might have seemed somewhat "logical" at the time but hardly any of them panned out and I also totally forgot about him letting the heart and soul of this team Gary Roberts walk.

I can't argue with anything in this thread, aside from juucer's post which is extremely clouded by blue and white. No disrespect intended, but most of your points are a serious stretch, as others have pointed out. Starting with Blake, the most selfish player (on the ice) to play for the Leafs in about a decade. That has nothing to do with his illness, it has everything to do with a lack of brain power.

Back to the main topic - putting together the "management team for the ages" is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard out of the Leafs front office, and that's saying something. It's definitely typical Leafs - lets hire the assistants before we hire the boss! It's like keeping Quinn as coach while hiring a new GM, and now potentially hiring a coach (Ron Wilson rumour today) before hiring a GM. They need to go back and learn some elementary school math, and how order of operations works.

When they fired Maurice I thought it meant that they were close to hiring someone. Now they could potentially be stuck trying to hire a coach without a GM in place. If there was nothing imminent, they should have kept Maurice and let the new GM decide what to do. What coach is going to take a lame-duck job like that? If a big-name guy does take it, I'd have to believe it's with some sort of guarantee that he's not going anywhere for a while, and that would in turn not sit well with many potential GM candidates. If there are any left.

Plus, unless a hire is very imminent, they're going to go into the draft with Fletcher in charge, which is far from ideal. It's not that I doubt Fletcher's ability to make picks, but I strongly feel that when you have a top-10 pick you shouldn't have a temporary guy making the call, particularly if there is a chance for a trade.

It's fine to want a management team for the ages but it shouldn't be Peddie putting it together. The only thing Peddie should be concerned with is hiring the best possible candidate for the President's role and let him do everything else.

Marmoset is absolutely right when it comes to the Leafs. They love to do things a$$backwards. They make the simplest process in to a long drawn out affair and never end up making the right move. Look at when they hired Ferguson, he wasn't hired until late August.

I really thought they had something when they hired Dryden all those year's back and he was content with being President and putting the right people in place. Unfortunately he got backdoored out and that was one of the worse things to happen to this team in recent memory.