Crap Shoot or Shooting Crap?

I think I’m one of the rare leaf fans that occassionaly agrees with Damien Cox, but I can’t say I agree with his absurd post in his blog The Spin at the Star.

He writes:

[If the Canes win] its sure going to make all the crap spewed by Pat Quinn and others with the Maple Leafs in recent years look like, well, crap. These guys tried to convince hockey fans that winning championships was a crapshoot, that in a 30-team league it was as much about luck than an excellence and what really mattered was accumulating the greatest amount of playoff games over the course of three or four seasons.

It’s hard to know where to begin in taking this paragraph apart.

1. As much as I love to bash the folks at MLSE, I don’t believe any of the suits have ever stated that it’s the accumulation of playoff games that matter. Does Cox really believe that Quinn and Co. didn’t want to win the cup? By and large these are men that have spent their entire working in pursuit of a drink from that great silver mug.
   
   We’re all grown-ups, we know how corporations work – you communicate the positive and stay away from the negative. Haven’t won a championship in 40 years? Talk up how many conference finals you’ve made or how many playoff games you’ve appeared in over the years. For a veteran newspaper man, Cox is picking an interesting time to play dumb on this one.
   
   
2. There is no denying that Luck plays a big part in sports, but I don’t recall anyone in Leaf management claiming that winning a championship was a crapshoot or a matter of spinning a roulette wheel. If that were indeed the case (both the luck part and the Leafs’ claiming it was so) why would successive teams have loaded up at the playoffs for a run at the cup. Why trade for Nolan or Leetch if it’s all going to come down to rabbits’ feet and pyramid power?
   
   
3. If the Canes have been anything in making it to the finals, it’s lucky. I’d advise Mr. Cox to go way way back deep into his archives and re-read his post of four days ago where he details all of the breaks that have come the Canes way. The odds of that many breaks going the Canes way? I'd call it a crapshoot.

The Spin indeed.

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