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Toronto Maple Leafs Blogger • Fan 590 •
BUFFALO (Oct. 30) – Perhaps the Maple Leafs should schedule 23 exhibition games next fall. They’d be able to include 21 of them as part of their subscriber package at regular-season prices and not hear a peep from the suits that lay down five and six figures to watch losing in person each year. The sheer profit consumed by Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd. would further engorge the retirement fund of Ontario’s aging teachers.
From purely a hockey viewpoint, however, these practice games would fall under the most basic mathematic equation: Any number times zero equals zero. The Maple Leafs – one-win wonders after 10 games of the real season – were gangbusters this autumn when there was nothing on the line. Just as they are in February and March of every lost campaign. You remember the euphoria of September, don’t you? A 6-and-3 exhibition record that featured four victories over last spring’s Cup finalists – two each against Detroit and Pittsburgh? Playoff chatter, induced by the bombastic general manager, was in full throttle as the puck dropped on the regular season.
Then morning arrived, and everyone snapped awake.
One month later, the so-called “frat” line of the Leafs will suit up in the American Hockey League when the Toronto Marlies host Adirondack at Ricoh Coliseum Friday night. The top organizational prospects, Tyler Bozak, Christian Hanson and Viktor Stalberg, are not considered good enough, right now, to skate for the worst team in the NHL. Stalberg – a Hart Trophy favorite in the pre-season – joined his greenhorn pals in the minors on Thursday afternoon, demoted to the Marlies with goaltender Joey MacDonald in favor of yo-yo forward Jiri Tlusty. Other promising exhibition subjects [Nazem Kadri, Carl Gunnarsson, Dale Mitchell, Jesse Blacker] are also in the AHL or with their junior team.
And, there’s only one way to describe such maneuvering by the Maple Leafs: Positively brilliant.
Nothing that Brian Burke does to influence his team the rest of this season will be as meaningful as parking the aforementioned in the relative obscurity of the AHL. As we’ve seen in past years with the likes of Don MacLean and Syl Apps III, the National Hockey League pre-season is an indication of absolutely nothing. Though Stalberg is clearly more of prospect for the Leafs today than MacLean or Apps III were a decade ago, they all had something in common… an ability to stand out during the bogus exhibition schedule. Force-feeding any of Bozak, Hanson or Stalberg on the Maple Leafs – particularly in what appears to be another train-wreck of a season – would do nothing but harm the club’s brightest young players.
Far better to have a long look at Tlusty – 22 this coming March, and with three seasons of professional hockey behind him. It’s possible the Leafs’ first-round draft pick in 2006 could fall into the broad assortment of players that are too good for the AHL and not quite good enough to play in the big league. Preliminary evidence consigns Tlusty to that category. But, we’ll never know, for certain, until the Czech native is granted a lengthy audition in the NHL. With any realistic playoff designs obliterated by the eight-game winless streak to start the season, Tlusty will perform in an environment of modest expectation with the Maple Leafs. That, too, should be beneficial.
Of course, I trotted out the word “realistic” in the above paragraph with some hesitancy. Many of the robots that e-mailed me after Wednesday night’s overtime loss in Dallas bawled about the officiating, and how the Leafs simply aren’t “getting any calls” early in the season. Yes, Mike Ribeiro did a fine job of selling a phantom high-stick on Michael Komisarek, but how these Internet scholars “forgot” Monday night’s affair in Anaheim – that had Duck players enacting Noah’s Ark and parading two-by-two to the penalty box – is simply astounding.
E-mail howardlberger@gmail.com
From purely a hockey viewpoint, however, these practice games would fall under the most basic mathematic equation: Any number times zero equals zero. The Maple Leafs – one-win wonders after 10 games of the real season – were gangbusters this autumn when there was nothing on the line. Just as they are in February and March of every lost campaign. You remember the euphoria of September, don’t you? A 6-and-3 exhibition record that featured four victories over last spring’s Cup finalists – two each against Detroit and Pittsburgh? Playoff chatter, induced by the bombastic general manager, was in full throttle as the puck dropped on the regular season.
Then morning arrived, and everyone snapped awake.
One month later, the so-called “frat” line of the Leafs will suit up in the American Hockey League when the Toronto Marlies host Adirondack at Ricoh Coliseum Friday night. The top organizational prospects, Tyler Bozak, Christian Hanson and Viktor Stalberg, are not considered good enough, right now, to skate for the worst team in the NHL. Stalberg – a Hart Trophy favorite in the pre-season – joined his greenhorn pals in the minors on Thursday afternoon, demoted to the Marlies with goaltender Joey MacDonald in favor of yo-yo forward Jiri Tlusty. Other promising exhibition subjects [Nazem Kadri, Carl Gunnarsson, Dale Mitchell, Jesse Blacker] are also in the AHL or with their junior team.
And, there’s only one way to describe such maneuvering by the Maple Leafs: Positively brilliant.
Nothing that Brian Burke does to influence his team the rest of this season will be as meaningful as parking the aforementioned in the relative obscurity of the AHL. As we’ve seen in past years with the likes of Don MacLean and Syl Apps III, the National Hockey League pre-season is an indication of absolutely nothing. Though Stalberg is clearly more of prospect for the Leafs today than MacLean or Apps III were a decade ago, they all had something in common… an ability to stand out during the bogus exhibition schedule. Force-feeding any of Bozak, Hanson or Stalberg on the Maple Leafs – particularly in what appears to be another train-wreck of a season – would do nothing but harm the club’s brightest young players.
Far better to have a long look at Tlusty – 22 this coming March, and with three seasons of professional hockey behind him. It’s possible the Leafs’ first-round draft pick in 2006 could fall into the broad assortment of players that are too good for the AHL and not quite good enough to play in the big league. Preliminary evidence consigns Tlusty to that category. But, we’ll never know, for certain, until the Czech native is granted a lengthy audition in the NHL. With any realistic playoff designs obliterated by the eight-game winless streak to start the season, Tlusty will perform in an environment of modest expectation with the Maple Leafs. That, too, should be beneficial.
Of course, I trotted out the word “realistic” in the above paragraph with some hesitancy. Many of the robots that e-mailed me after Wednesday night’s overtime loss in Dallas bawled about the officiating, and how the Leafs simply aren’t “getting any calls” early in the season. Yes, Mike Ribeiro did a fine job of selling a phantom high-stick on Michael Komisarek, but how these Internet scholars “forgot” Monday night’s affair in Anaheim – that had Duck players enacting Noah’s Ark and parading two-by-two to the penalty box – is simply astounding.
E-mail howardlberger@gmail.com
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