American Hooligans

The most curious of sports fans is the fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs. They are often angry - you would be too if your team hadn’t won a Stanley Cup since 1967 - but they are also a very proud and confident people. After a win, the national media in Canada, which is all based in Toronto, breathlessly covers it as a turning of a corner, each prospect is heralded as a potential savior and a streak usually gets some talking head thinking about a Stanley Cup.

Last night, the Leafs lost badly to the Buffalo Sabers, which leaves them 6 points behind Philadelphia with 9 games left for the last playoff spot. There are also tree teams separating them, including Buffalo. What does that mean? Well, playoff prognosticators can officially scratch the Leafs off “the bubble” and into “the bottom feeders”. It’s over guys. There is virtually no chance that Toronto makes the playoffs.

If you’re a fan of the New York Knicks, Cleveland Browns, New York Mets or another sorry excuse for a mismanaged, but proud franchise, just wake up and do a Hail Mary that you were not born a Leaf fan. And I assume it is something you must be born, because no self respecting and evolved intelligence would ever inflict this on themselves.

This is a team that routinely guts their prospect cupboard for aging, over the hill and not really all that good veterans to try and make the playoffs. The result has been a long string of finishes in the middle of the pack and as such, a lot of bad draft position. Luckily, it hasn’t mattered, since the Leafs neglected amateur scouting and have not made a good draft choice in decades, save a goalie two years ago - Tukka Rask - who is going to be gold. Luckily, now X-GM John Ferguson Jr remedied that by trading Rask to Boston for over priced back-up Andrew Raycroft. That’s right, even the Bruins can fleece the Leafs.

Their love of the middle, but out of the playoff spots has gotten so absurd that every year they fall to the bottom of the pack and are virtually dead. Prognosticators start looking at the big, franchise making prospects and salivating. What would one bad year be for a star? Well, this year Steve Stamkos, a Toronto native, is just that kind of franchise player and the Leafs looked like they’d be fighting the LA Kings and Tampa Bay Lightning for the right to draft him.

Then, over the last few weeks the stupid idiots went on an insane hot streak. The GM tried to gut the team and the deadline, but failed, only getting a couple draft picks for a couple unfortunate contracts. As a result, the guys that were left took it and ran with it and actually had them running towards a playoff spot, no matter how slim the hopes. They beat Philadelphia twice last week, which closed the gap and really gave them a chance. In true form though, it was too little too late and last night’s loss all but mathematically seals that deal. Luckily for Leaf fans though, they’ve opened up a good gap and won’t pick in the top 5.

They have no one to blame but themselves. This is a team that gave “No Trade Clauses” to half its freaking team. And so, when they fired their GM and hired interim-GM Cliff Fletcher - who is like 810 years old and has a primary qualification for the job of once being quoted as saying “draft-shmaft” (good choice of a dude to restock the prospect cupboard) - he was handcuffed. Their captain and a true legend of the game, Mats Sundin had one. That people understand. Unfortunately, so did insanely overpaid and defensive liability - he literally shot the puck in his own net, a good shot, in OT earlier this year - Bryan McCabe. As does solid, but spectacularly overpaid Pavel Kubina; slumping, overpaid, long-term contract laden and really old Jason Blake; fan favorite, but generally useless Darcy Tucker; and relatively sane contracted Tomas Kaberle.

The thing is, you cannot make six of your highest paid players with no-trade clauses in a Cap world. What’s worse, some of these guys made so much and for so long that no sane team would have taken them anyway. Nonetheless, trader Fletch apparently engineered trades only to see them all vetoed by the players, who like a business executive in a nondescript San Francisco basement just love the pain, and thus were only able to trade two guys who made too much to be in a league they’re likely not good enough to be in anyway for a couple mid-round draft picks.

Sundin, Tucker, McCabe and Kubina could have fetched them a King’s Ransom of players that will be around for a decade, not a few years. Sundin, a legend, earned that no trade clause, but also would have fetched the biggest reward. That said, he’s been their face forever and carried a lot of bad teams a long way. He earned it. The others? God only knows. Kaberle, I suspect it is a self-protection clause, as he’s affordable and talented. The type of guy you build a defense around and him having a no-trade protects the Leafs from themselves. Blake? The contract - signed last summer -has 4 years left after this year (he’ll be 38 when it ends, positively ancient for a smallish, fast scorer) also pays too much (4 million a year) for someone who doesn’t score enough goals (13 so far this year, down only 27 from last year!) and has questionable health (unfortunately, Blake was diagnosed with a rare, but manageable form of Leukemia just after signing) for anyone to take him on.

So, what does this mean? Well, the Leafs are going to finish middle-bottom of the pack. They’ll get a halfway decent draft pick, but not Stamkos. They have no prospects in the cupboard. They have very little cap space to sign free agents and seriously, knowing everything, why would anyone want to sign on to this Titanic? They are going to be in trouble until some of these guys change their minds and wave the clauses or the contracts expire. That could be half a decade.

So, sorry Leaf fans, if last night was bleak, it’s just a microcosm of your future for the next five years unless Cliff or whoever you ultimately hire does some magic. It’s over.