Every few weeks I do a podcast where I talk all things Leafs with the fine fellows of Leaf blog Pension Plan Puppets.
On the morning of October 17, Clarke MacArthur was the #1 topic on Twitter in Canada.
Each new hockey season supposedly brings with it plenty of hope for the faithful. After the debacle that was the first 10 games of the 2009-10 Leaf season, I'll happily forego hope and settle for relief.
It was great to see the Leafs get their first win right out of the gate. I never would have guessed that Tim Brent would be the first Leaf to light the lamp. Here's a quick look at who scored the Leafs' first goal of the season since 1995:
| Year | First Leaf Goal |
| 1995-96 | Zdenek Nedved |
| 1996-97 | Mike Craig |
| 1997-98 | Igor Korolev |
| 1998-99 | Sergei Berezin |
| 1999-2000 | Mats Sundin |
| 2000-2001 | Jonas Hoglund |
| 2001-2002 | Alexander Mogilny |
| 2002-2003 | Alexander Mogilny |
| 2003-2004 | Nik Antropov* |
| Lockout | |
| 2005-06 | Bryan McCabe |
| 2006-07 | Mats Sundin |
| 2007-08 | Nik Antropov |
| 2008-09 | Pavel Kubina |
| 2009-10 | Alexi Ponikarovsky |
| 2010-11 | Tim Brent |
As the Leafs get ready to start their 2010-11 season at home against the dreaded Montreal Canadiens, the team has more question marks than Frank Gorshin’s Riddler suit.
The Vancouver Canucks cut put centre Brendan Morrison on waivers today. As the 29th best team in the NHL last season, the Leafs have a very good shot at winning a claim, should they put one in. making him a UFA.
I don't normally weigh in on short-term roster moves or hypothetical personnel decisions, but the Leafs are awfully thin at centre and while they're not swimming in cap space, they do have room left on their 50 SPC limit to grab a guy like Morrison.
With final cuts expected at noon today (October 4, 2010) the Leafs still have six centres in camp, and none of them seem prepared to handle the tough minutes.
Tyler Bozak looked tremendous in the final half of last season, but how plausible does it seem that an undrafted kid with 37 NHL games experience will succeed as a #1 Centre in the NHL?
Mikhail Grabovski is a serviceable #2, but there a plenty of questions of size, strength stamina (and sanity).
Nazem Kadri seems destined to start this season with the Marlies.
In the #3 and #4 slots, the Leafs look like they’re going to go with AHL cast-offs.
It may seem hard to believe, but this team is going to start with two of Tim Brent, Mike Zigomanis and Christian Hanson up the middle. Hanson, who I thought looked good in camp and is one of the few big bodies at centre, might be starting with the Marlies as he's waiver exempt.
I can’t see how a guy with 37GP, Grabbo, and two AHLers up the middle is any sort of recipe for success, but then again I haven't won managed to win a hockey pool in years and I've been turned down for every GM opening in the NHL.
Obviously, Morrison isn't the player he once was, but he's a known quantity, a veteran presence and he has ties to Burke, having played for him in Vancouver and Anaheim.
It's a short term solution to be certain, but I'd feel better with Morrison playing 8 minutes a night than handing those minutes to Brent and/or Zigomanis.
**UPDATED**
The Calgary Flames signed Morrison for $750K. The Leafs look like they're rolling out Bozak, Grabovski, Brent and Mitchell as their starting four with Zigomanis in the press box.
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I was never much of a Darcy Tucker fan.
He was a small man who played a big man’s game. He threw big hits, would fight just about anyone and excelled at the cross-crease tap in on the power play. While that may have brought him the adoration of many Leafs fans, he was also a pylon on the defensive side of the puck and had a terrible propensity for taking dumb penalties.
Say what you will about +/- (and we all recognize that it's a flawed stat) but Tucker was only on the plus side of the ledger three times in his 14 year career. On the Leafs, Tucker was always pretty much the worst ranked of his peers: 32 of 33 in 2003; 15 of 36 in 2004; 28 of 32 in 2006; 30 of 30 in 2007; 26 of 32 in 2008.
What's the old joke? A Darcy Tucker hat trick is a power play goal, bad penalty and a -2 on the night.
My feelings for Tucker would likely be different if he'd taken a page from Bryan McCabe's play book and allowed the Leafs to trade him. Instead, Tucker decided to shiv my beloved blue and white, sticking them with a cap hit through to 2014. Sure, Tucker was 100% legally correct in making the Leafs buy him out, but contract law is rarely the basis for picking who you cheer and who you despise at the rink. This was clearly demonstrated by Tucker's return to the ACC, which was marked with a tribute video, while poor McCabe, who did the right thing, returned to a chorus of boos.
In announcing his retirement, Tucker has been talking up his love of the Leafs but I don't believe it. Not one bit. I look at that buy-out he saddled my favourite team with and all I can think is, $6 million is the equivalent of how many billion grains of salt?
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This work by M. Forbes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.
