Rebuilding on the Fly: How Brian Burke Doomed the Maple Leafs to More Disappointment

Rebuilding on the Fly:

How Brian Burke Doomed the Leafs to More Disappointment

by Riley Haas

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2013 Riley Haas

Cover Photo by Leon Switzer

Adapted by Neil Flanders

Also by Riley Haas

Acknowledgements

This book would not have happened without MLSE hiring Brian Burke. All NHL statistics are from the essential hockey-reference.com, except monthly differences in points and ice-time, which are from nhl.com. Minor league and international numbers are from hockeydb.com. Salaries are from capgeek.com. Draft valuations are Scott Cullen’s. The Leafs’ transaction list comes from Pro Sports Transactions,without which this book would not be possible. Wikipedia may have been consulted once or twice. Opinions are my own. As are any mistakes.

Table of Contents

Apology

Introduction

Chapter I: Time for a Change

Chapter II: A New Direction

Chapter III: Hiring by Acclamation

Chapter IV: A New Era

Chapter V: 2009 - Promises, Promises

Chapter VI: 2010 - A New Captain

Chapter VII: 2011 - Burke’s Team At Last

Chapter VIII: 2012 - Less Bang for the Buck

Chapter IX: 2013 - Burke Junior

Chapter X: Doomed to Mediocrity

Chapter XI: What Could Burke Have Done Differently?

Chapter XII: What Do We Do Now?

Conclusion

My Apology

This book is the result of over a decade of frustration with the supposed preeminent franchise in professional hockey. I am a sports fan who cannot help but think about the big picture, and it has become apparent to me that the big picture for MLSE is money and nothing else. Maybe that’s as it should be, but it doesn’t make for a good fan experience - for some of us anyway - and I’d like to believe that the real reason people own sports teams is for the joy of it, not to make money. (Of course, the Leafs are owned primarily by corporations.)

I grew up a baseball fan, as my father is American. However, I seem to have been swept up by Leafs fever when I was 11 and the Leafs were icing the most competitive team they had in a decade and a half. Honestly, before the 1992-93 Maple Leafs, I barely knew hockey existed. After the series with LA, I didn’t want to know hockey existed. (Also, the Blue Jays were kind of good.) The way I tell it to myself, I was so let down by the loss to the Kings that I didn’t watch hockey for another five years - even though I had never really watched hockey before. I really can’t swear to you now whether or not that’s true, but I’ve always felt like that’s what happened.

However, things changed when my brother and I lucked into some Leafs playoff tickets: 11th row, Leafs vs. Flyers, April 30, 1999. Cujo made 33 saves and the Leafs won in overtime, 2-1. Perreault scored the winner. It’s not an exaggeration to say this game changed my life. I mean, whether or not I had fully realized at 11 how much fun hockey was, seeing the NHL playoffs live from the 11th row, behind the Leafs’ bench, was a revelation. So I became a hockey fan. (And I thought this was so great that, in my mind I changed it to a second round series, and I think Sully scored the winner in double OT. It was a better story.)

I wasn’t a very good hockey fan however, at least in my own personal estimation, until I went away to university in rural Quebec. There, I lived with people who played at least semi-competitively during their teens, and I watched games all the time. And they were often the games of other teams, as I no longer lived in Toronto. And what happened is I began to see the game differently: I began to see it better - I noticed plays other than goals, assists and hits, and I began to see strategy - and I began to have a slightly more ‘objective’ view of the Leafs. That is, I was able to fully admit when the Leafs had been out-played and won just because of Cujo, or what have you.

My rabid fandom - laced with some kind of pretence of objectivity - continued despite the lockout and I can honestly say that it might have continued to this day, had I not sought to apply some level of reasoning to how the franchise was built and maintained as a result either of too much education, or of boredom. And so I got more critical of hockey decisions, especially as the Leafs’ playoff drought continued.

This book originated as a series of never-read blog posts I wrote complaining about the mismanagement of the Maple Leafs. I was through with Quinn as a coach well before he was fired - principally because he seemed to have a 1 rookie per year rule - but never as I GM, I hate to admit. I was done with JFJ after a couple of trade deadlines passed and JFJ couldn’t seem to make up his mind about what to do with the Leafs. (The no-trade clauses didn’t help.) I was fine with Fletcher as a temporary replacement, at the time. I welcomed Burke, with much scepticism, at least because he was not JFJ. But I lost faith pretty quickly, with the wild promise of Tavares and the insane Kessel trade.

The longer Ferguson, Fletcher and Burke ran the team into the ground, the more annoyed I got. And the more uninterested. But also, I must admit, at some level I felt betrayed. I feel as though I was promised a proper rebuild and instead I got Phil Kessel and Deon Phaneuf. So I have something admit: I watched a lot more games each season between 1998 and 2011 than I have since. I am now a basketball fan first.

That’s what the rebuild on the fly did to me. It made me see the obvious: it is way, way easier to rebuild a 12-man roster where only 9 players are remotely important than it is to build a 23-man roster where a bare minimum of 11 players are vitally important. It’s just easier to rebuild in the NBA, even if nobody wants to play in Toronto. That’s what Burke did to me.

And so I have written this book. I have tried my utmost not to make it personal, but at some level it always will be. I feel like MLSE and Burke promised me a team that would regularly compete for the Cup sometime in the distant future, and what I got was a team that gets out-shot as much as it is possible while still making the playoffs (against the odds). This is a team that is as reliant on goaltending as the Cujo Maple Leafs - perhaps more - and which will be consistently mediocre enough to never be able to acquire high draft picks. Any improvements will come from random luck: lucking out on low-ranked or non-ranked prospects, lucking out on trades, lucking out on free agents (if that’s even possible). And frankly I don’t want to care any more. And so you have this book.

It is a pre-analytics book, I’m sorry to say. The ‘analysis’ is entirely qualitative. But that’s only because, as people have slowly realized that we can look at more than just points, and goal-differential and saves, Ferguson, Fletcher, Burke and Nonise have slowly killed my love of hockey. For that, I am sorry.

Introduction

The Leafs team that exited the lockout was not a team that inspired hope for the future. Though the team had let a number of veteran players go prior to the lockout - including Alex Mogilny and Gary Roberts - it had replaced them with other veterans. The was in a bit of a sorry state in terms of building for the future - if you were inclined to think that way. Here is the ‘06 Leafs Top 6 forwards, Top 4 D and #1 goalie (based on games played and ice-time, not actual lines):

There’s no getting away from the age of the defense and goaltending, with only Kaberle under 30. (It should be noted that when young call-ups did play for this team, they played a lot, as both Jay Harrison and Ian White played major minutes when they did indeed play.)

The forwards, age-wise, were less worrisome but Steen was very much still an up and coming prospect - and this season, and this season alone during his Maple Leafs tenure, he made a major name for himself during Mats’ absence - but both Antropov - the Leafs highest pick and sole top 10 draft pick between 1993 and 2007 who had never lived up to his expectations - and Poni were already very much the players they would always be. Of the main forwards this season:

• Mats was the aging franchise player;

• Allison had been signed to a one-year contract to see if he could resuscitate his career - his slightly less than point-per-game scoring pace and horrible minus didn’t seem to be enough to do so;

• The Leafs were still trying to figure out what they had in Steen;

• Tucker’s best years of his career had come playing with Mats - in fact this was to be the best year of his entire career;

• Antropov had established himself as maddeningly inconsistent, averaging a little better than half a point per game but looking dominant at times and utterly uninterested at others;

• And Ponikarovsky was yet to show that, if playing with a good enough centre, he could score 20 goals on occasion.

The other young forward playing significant minutes this year was Matt Stajan, who was establishing himself as a checker but who would later become known to Leafs fans as the first of many failed attempts at replacing Mats as the team’s #1 centre. With the exception of Antropov, none of the team’s under-30s were ever considered great prospects - though Steen was considered good once - and there really appeared to be nobody able to fill Mats’ shoes when he inevitably retired somewhere in the not too distant future.

A similar lack of forward-thinking could be seen with the defense, though change was slightly less imperative, as at least Kaberle and McCabe appeared to a tandem the team could rely on for the foreseeable future. The good performances of some of the young D that came up here and there made it appear as if the team was at least going to be above average on the back-end for the time being.

The Leafs appeared to have no immediate future in goal, with only some distant goalie prospects in Justin Pogge and Tuukka Rask as possible replacements for Belfour.

How did this happen exactly? Why did the Leafs come out of the lockout with a team built around a 34-year-old centre and a pair of D around 30, and a 40-year-old goaltender?

The answer is that the Leafs had one Top 10 draft pick between the 1992-93 and the 2007-08 seasons, for the most part because they were rather successful during this period. In fact, from the ‘92-’93 season to the lockout, the Leafs failed to make the playoffs only twice. Moreover, they made the conference finals 4 times - in ‘93, ‘94, ‘99 and ‘02 - in ten seasons and three more times than they had made it since the league expanded and their infamous Cup drought began - their last and only other trip that far into the playoffs had been in 1978. Despite what those of us who lived through the era might think, this was the most successful Leafs era since the expansion of the league, so it makes sense they had so few high picks and, therefore, so few young players.

Actually though, the Leafs had been eschewing the draft for a long time, even when they weren’t successful. This team that was, at least relatively speaking, so successful for over a decade was not built the same way as the Cup winners of the work stoppage-lockout era. If you look at the few Cup winners of this era - the Devils, the Wings, the Avs, Stars and Lightning - which also happened to be The Era of the Free Agent, most of these teams built through the draft and trades and merely augmented their talent with free agents. (See appendix I)

The ‘99 and ‘02 Wings relied to some extent on Free Agent signings in order to win their Cups. The Lightning were the only Cup winner to have acquired more of their players through trades than drafts. Only two teams possessed less than double digits in players drafted. Now lets look at the good Leafs teams - four of the five best to have taken to the ice since the ‘67-’68 season - and how they were composed. The contrast is striking. (See appendix II)

For one thing, it is obvious that health helps: the Leafs playoff rosters are, on average, significantly larger than the Cup winners’. But there is a clear difference in terms of how players were acquired from the successful teams to the Leafs. And the contrast is even more striking if we look at Top 6 forwards, Top 4 D and starting goalies. (See appendix III)

In all but one season during this time, the team that relied less on free agents was more successful. And this is the free agent era. I’m not saying the Leafs didn’t win Cups solely because of their reliance on free agents and trades, but rather that there was a pattern to the most successful teams, and the Leafs didn’t follow that pattern.

Why were the Leafs so reliant on trades and free agents? Very simply the team hadn’t been built through the draft in ages. It’s a combination of an unwillingness to build through the draft - no doubt in part an unwillingness bred through financial and limited on-ice success - and from thoroughly bad scouting. From 1981 through 1990 the Leafs, believe it or not, had a top 10 pick every season. The team was bad and they were generally rewarded for it, at least through picks. They traded away their 1991 first round pick, but had another Top 10 in 1992 and, through trades, had a Top 15 and a Top 20 in 1993, at perhaps their post-1976 apex. But their ‘92 Top 10 was the last Top 10 pick they would have for years, both due to the trading of picks and their new-found success : after missing the playoffs in ‘97 and ‘98 they would not miss again until after the lockout. (For the Leafs’ draft history see appendix IV and appendix V.)

The Leafs had exactly one #1 draft pick in the history of the draft which is below average, but with all their picks the Leafs have drafted exactly two Hall of Fame players since they last won the Cup (and I would argue at least one is a borderline Hall of Famer, not actually a real one) and a number of the All-Stars the Leafs drafted became All-Stars while on other teams.

The Leafs have drafted 9 players to play over 1000 games, 1 player to score 500 goals, 3 players to score 400, 5 players to score 300, 13 players to score 200; 1 player to have 700 assists, 2 players to have 600 assists, 3 players to have 500 assists, 6 players to have 400 assists, 12 players to have 300 assists; 1 player to score 1200 points, 2 players to score 1100 points, 3 players to score 1000 points, 5 players to score 700 points, 8 players to score 600 points, and only 13 players to score 500 points. The Leafs have drafted only 1 goalie to play over 600 games, 2 goalies to play over 500 games, 5 players to play over 300 games. (Until Rask plays a comparable number of games, Potvin is far and away the best goalie the Leafs ever drafted, but it sure looks like he will be.)

This lack of draft success is more than bad-luck: it represents the possibly wilful disregard of one aspect of scouting - scouting amateur and non-NHL pro players - due to both a certain degree of on-ice success - least from 1993 through 2004 - and also because of a near-complete disregard of the on-ice product in the long-term. If it looks like the Leafs are going to make the playoffs this season - therefore the fans are happy, and there’s no threat to revenue - what’s the use of trying to make them better in the future?

All of this is to say that the Leafs team coming out of the lockout was so old and so mediocre because of decades of bad drafting, because of a lack of picks (because of previous success - in the late ‘70s and early ‘90s to mid ‘00s - or trades, perhaps the most famous of which is the Tom Kurvers trade that gave up the pick that became future Hall of Famer Scott Niedermayer), because of a lack of quality scouting, and because of luck. A primary causal factor - though far from the only one - in the Leafs Cup drought is this draft history. And it was a history that was supposed to change with a rebuild.

Chapter I:

Time for a Change

The first seasons after the lockout brought disappointment for the Leafs and perhaps a sense that the old model wasn’t working any more.

In 2005-06, the Leafs managed 90 points but still didn’t make the playoffs. It was the first time they hadn’t made the playoffs since 1998. Perhaps these results suggested the Sundin-centric team had to be changed, but that was tough to realize because the 34 year old and once again led the team in points - nearly scoring 80 - and the Leafs offense wasn’t exactly the problem, finishing just outside of the top 10 in Goals For. They had been a significantly worse defensive team - Ed Belfour appeared to be finally acting his age of 40, with his sub-.900 save percentage, and he lost his job to J.S. Aubin - and the teams top 2 D were all offense, putting up a combined 135 points on the season.

After the year off, the Leafs had been forced to do some very un-Leaf-like things: The Leafs had finally been forced to rely on at least some of their prospects - 21 year old Alex Steen and 22 year olds Kyle Wellwood and Matt Stajan played significant roles, and there were appearances by Staffan Kronwall (23), Carlo Colaiacovo (23), Ben Ondrus (23), Ian White (21) and Jay Harrison (23) - which was an extremely un-Quinn thing to do. But in order to try and compete with a lineup which mostly meshed veterans and untested prospects, the Leafs also took some risks on players most teams assumed were done: the 32-year-old Eric Lindros and the 30-year-old Jason Allison, to name the most promising examples.

But due to chemistry and injury problems - including the first long stretch Sundin had missed in ages - the offense was never good enough to make up for their defense which, as I said, was full of offense-first vets and some really young players with little to no NHL experience filling in when those guys were hurt.

Yet the 90 points had been just 2 shy of making the playoffs where, after the near-triumph of the 6th-place Flames in ‘04, and more specially the near-triumph of the 8th-place Oilers at the end of this very season, everyone had to be thinking If we just make the playoffs anything can happen. Presumably that is what MLSE thought when they decided that the only thing wrong with the 2005-06 Leafs was their coach.

Defense had been the problem, they thought, so the solution was to let Ferguson try to fix that by hiring a new, defense-first coach in Paul Maurice, who had taken the 2002 Hurricanes to the Final despite their very okay year (another league without such silly seeding would have ranked them 7th not 3rd) and by changing up the roster just enough to make the leap over the 90 point hurdle. That meant replacing the ancient starting goaltender with someone younger, extending the prospects which had helped so much that season, focusing on the draft in the summer despite the lack of quality picks, and making the Leafs a little tougher.

Ferguson was actually the kind of GM that at team like the Leafs appeared the perfect fit for. He was a real hockey guy; the son of ever-popular Habs forward John Ferguson and an ‘up-and-comer’ as an assistant GM for the Blues - who were just coming to terms with their own need to rebuild after being built around Al MacInnis for the last decade. Coming into Toronto in the summer of 2003, Ferguson seemed like a breath of fresh air: he was replacing Pat Quinn, a coach / GM who was seemingly not in the least interested in developing younger players - at least more than one at a time - and who was very committed to his own particular style of hockey - dump and chase - a style that seemed particularly anaemic in the playoffs against trapping teams, such as the Devils.

Ferguson had come to the Leafs to continue Quinn’s success: to let Quinn focus on coaching and let Ferguson keep the team competitive as Sundin went from franchise player to veteran leader. Other teams were doing it - the Red Wings, for example - so why not the Leafs?

But obviously the new GM and Coach relationship did not work out as planned and Ferguson found himself with the wrong coach for this particular league - a league in which young legs and defensive strategies were suddenly a lot more successful than dump-and-chase and body-checking.

Unfortunately, whether due to MLSE putting on the pressure to make the playoffs yet again, or due to his own short-sightedness, Ferguson soon found himself making the same kinds of moves Quinn had been making, which resulted in the Leafs missing the playoffs for the first time in seven seasons. Though history would show that Ferguson presided over one of the most productive drafts in recent Leafs history - out of Ferguson’s 7 picks, Nikolai Kulemin has already played in over 400 games, Jiri Tlusty has nearly made it to 350, Viktor Stalberg is over 300, James Reimer was the starting goaltender for the Leafs until this season, and Leo Komarov and Korbinian Holzer both played for the team (Not bad for a team with one first rounder) - Ferguson was not ready to make the gutsy changes required to set the ship right.

After hiring Paul Maurice, Ferguson made the following major moves:

• he signed 30-year-old #1 D Bryan McCabe to a 5-year extension with a no-trade clause;

• he re-signed Belfour’s backup, Mikael Tellqvist;

• he traded one of the Leafs two goalies of the future, Tuukka Rask, to the Boston Bruins for former Calder-winner Andrew Raycroft;

• he signed the 31-year-old Hal Gill to a 3-year contract;

• he signed the 30-year-old Pavel Kubina to a 4-year contract with a no-trade clause;

• he extended Raycroft before he played a single game;

• he signed the 31-year-old Bates Battaglia;

• he extended Nik Antropov, the team’s 10th leading scorer the previous season;

• he let the 37-year-old Luke Richardson walk;

• he extended many of the younger and role players who had contributed to the Leafs near-success the previous season (Brendan Bell, Colaiacovo, Harrison, Kris Newbury, Wellwood);

• he let the 33-year-old Eric Lindros walk;

• he signed the 32-year-old Mike Peca;

• he extended Wade Belak;

• he let the 35-year-old Alex Khavanov walk;

• he signed Boyd Devereaux;

• he never re-signed 31-year-old Jason Allison, but nobody else did either.

Though it is easiest to criticize in hindsight, there’s a real mixed message in there. Ferguson let many of the oldest players on the team walk - or at least players who were not that old but were clearly done. But he most often replaced them with slightly younger players. And it was the way he did it:

• Ferguson recognized the value in non-monetary incentives so to keep McCabe from getting a monster contract in free agency - McCabe’s 19 goals and 68 points had numerous hockey pundits that evidently never watched him play concluding he was among the best D in the league - and to keep Pavel Kubina’s cost down - Kubina had scored 17 goals prior to the lockout - Ferguson gave them no-trade clauses. This was an innovative idea that might have been effective, had Ferguson offered it to younger, better players. But it would come back to bite him. (Ferguson had already used this strategy to lock-up McCabe’s partner - and the Leafs real #1 - Tomas Kaberle, for significantly less money during the season.)

• Ferguson used the veterans Kubina and Gill to replace the ultra-veterans Khavanov and Richardson.

• And he replaced the Leafs’ 40-year-old goalie with a 26-year-old goalie. The only problem here was that the price, which was one of the two main goalie prospects for the franchise; in this case Ferguson gambled and lost as Rask has turned out to be the legitimate NHL star goalie