Welcome to the Jungle

Thanks to mapleleafs.com the Burke newser is up and available for your viewing pleasure.

What a nice way to get your Leafs news: unfiltered and without the imaginsitcal stylings of Berger and his limo driver, Simmons and his team of crack orthopedic consultants, and Cox and his inner (and outer) demons.

A few things to watch/consider:

• Peddie's slip when he says financial instead of family (I have a feeling he does that with all "f" words)
• Burke's entire performance especially his tremendous, splendorous, amazing use of adjectives (I lost count).
• Just two questions from the media, which I suspect that has more to do with timing as Burke was queued up to do a pile of one-on-one media interviews right after his remarks. Of the two, the Star's Kevin McGran wastes one by asking Burke to assess Fletcher's trades to date - what's he gonna say, "Gee, that Hollwegg deal is a real head scratcher."
• Bob McKenzie's morning column at TSN is like a transcript of this thing, talk about nailing it.

Maple Leafs: Are the Fans to Blame?

There’s an interesting cross-post up between Pension Plan Puppets and Down Goes Brown regarding an abominable article by Howard Berger (I’m not sending any traffic to the Bergermeister Meister Berger's blog so you’ll have to locate the article yourself. Hint: it’s really not worth giving him the page views).

Here’s the money quote from Working Class Howard:

“Leaf fanatics constantly bitch about the likes of Damien Cox and Steve Simmons, only to make them the most widely-read columnists in the city… The same Leaf zealots that call me a rotten bastard in e-mails are the first to wonder where my blog is if I skip a day.”

I don’t know what’s happened to Howard, if it was the Avery Cancer thing, his having to buy a ticket to a Cowboys game with his own money while the team he covers for a living – the horrible terrible no good loosing Leafs, millionaires all of ‘em, were treated to a luxury box or if the rise of user-created content, such as blogs and message boards, has resulted in an increased scrutiny that’s too much for the error-prone radio man to bear.

No matter the cause, someone has poisoned the water in poor Howard’s well.

It’s the Love of the Team, Stupid.

Howard's certainly right in that there is an insatiable demand for all things Leaf. And he’s also right in that it’s Leaf fans that make Cox and Simmons two of the most read columnists in Canada.

Where he’s wrong is in implying that the likes of Simmons, Cox and McCown are the most read/watched/listened to because of any special skills or abilities or even their penchant to stir the pot.

These guys are widely read because they file on the Leafs.

Full stop.

If it was Cox and not the content that pulled in readership, his Wimbledon columns would be among the most read at the Star. But when he files on tennis or the Argos you can hear the crickets chirping between his paragraphs.

If it was Berger and not the leafs that drove the numbers, Howard could blog about Montreal limousine companies day and night and still get 200 comments a post.

It's a tough question, but where would Berger be without the Leafs?

Turning the Sites on the Fans

This is where it gets a little tricky.

It was one thing when the mediots went after Ballard, Stavro or MLSE – targets that were (and are) clearly worthy of media scorn - from Ballard’s personal vendettas to Stavro’s cash crunch dismantling of the team to MLSE’s alleged meddling and hiring of JFJ (ugh).

But it’s another thing entirely to go after Leaf fans.

Let’s be clear about this.

The fans have nothing to do with how sports teams ultimately perform (Coyotes, Predators, Capitals, Black Hawks, Islanders and hell, even Jays fans, are staying away in droves. How’s that working out for them? How many Championships have they lined up in the past decade or two?)

The fans don’t make bad trades for questionable goaltending.

The fans don’t decide who gets top minutes on the PK.

The fans don’t sit at the draft table or have input into player development.

And the fans don’t have much of a say in how the media covers the team.

As far as I know, Leaf fans also don’t have editorial positions at any of the major media outlets in this country.

The fans don’t write the articles and columns praising the team when it goes on a middling win streak and the same fans don’t write the columns and articles claiming the sky is falling when the Leafs go on their annual losing streak each January/February.

The fans don’t program the radio stations around call-in shows.

The fans don’t file blog posts based on emails read after a weekend away in Niagara (nice job, Howie).

There’s a great quote from political circles: “Any party that takes credit for the rain, ought to be prepared to be blamed for the drought.”

When the Leafs finally win a cup (and odds are that they will – eventually, maybe not for 100 years, but eventually) will the media let Leaf fans take the credit after decades of blame?

I doubt it.

Re-shaping the Leafs Media Environment

Howie’s bizarre-o world rant brings to mind the whole issue of information dissemination in this age of blogs, discussion boards, media convergence and really good artisanal salami (sorry, my mind drifted there back to my brief holiday in Seattle).

Given the craptacular job done by most of the media contingent following the Leafs, you'd think that fans would be flocking to the official leafs site. They may be, but the blogs I read aren't, I'm not, and I've never had a water-cooler conversation where someone referenced the Leafs web-page (Cox, Simmons and Berger - yes; TorontoMapleLeafs.com - no).

So, in the spirit of Berger’s odd-post, my rather boring communications consulting day job and the fact that no one I know, including MLSE, is properly using the Leafs web-page, here are ten ways the Leafs could revamp LeafsTV, update their web-presence and easily provide more viable, unfiltered and interesting alternative information for their fans and reduce/supplant the role of the increasingly adversarial, cranky and ineffective media:

1. Continue to post unedited news conferences in their entirety (yes, even the inane media questions) on the Leafs Web-site.
   
2. Increase the amount of first-person reporting on Leafs-TV and cross-post it to mapleleafs.com. Why not a weekly (or better yet, every other day) news interview with one of Fletcher, Jackson, Nieuwendyk, Gilmour, scouts, new players, coaches, assistant coaches, capologists, trainers, equipment managers – you name it (Steve Paikan is a big Leafs fan and a great interviewer – let’s give him the part-time gig).
   
3. Conduct more round-table discussions on Leaf topics with players, coaches, reporters, authors and hockey “experts” to be carried on Leafs TV and cross-posted to mapleleafs.com
   
4. Revamp the “Leafs Insider” newsletter to provide balanced informed insightful content and strive to make it more timely (the Leafs dealt for Hollweg and announced their intention to add two more players yesterday, yet I’ve got nothing from my Leafs Insider email newsletter. Nada. Zilch.)
   
5. Cancel the “Leafs Nation” magazine and put the resources into real-time electronic coverage of the team (was anyone out there aware of this magazine? Any of you ever read it?) News cycles are way too short for a long-lead magazine to be relevant or of interest to today’s fans (case in point: you can read about Paul Maurice and get tips from Kyle Wellwood in the latest issue - for those who are interested, Mr. Wellwood's advice is on how to take a pass, not the secrets of a successful all-you-can-eat buffet).
   
6. Get rid of the cronies. Want better coverage on Leafs TV? Fire/ reduce the number of former Leaf players/ barbie-like hostesses and add more insightful/ neutral commentators.
   
7. Hire better bloggers. This is what MLSE is offering fans? Really? That's an official TML blog? Cripes. Has no one at MLSE read Mirtle, MC79, Behind the Net, Fire Joe Morgan, Basketball Jones, Pensblog, etc.
   
8. Take advantage of digital media and make it entertaining. These guys have got it figured out – why can’t MLSE do something like this at the prospect camp? Who wouldn't want to see Luke Schenn take on Kulemin at Jenga or Hungry Hungry Hippos?
   
9. MLSE should be considering the power of Open Data Exchange - opening, hosting and reflecting (and very carefully filtering/refining) the flow of Leafs information that's out there. To wit: "“The winners won’t be those that control the most data — the winners will be those that channel the most data — and those that create the most value on top of the data flow.”
   
10. Quietly seek extraordinary rendition for any writer, blogger, copy desk editor that uses a plan the parade joke.

Parsing Mats

Two of my favourite bloggers, PPP and Sean, have interesting posts up about the future of Mats Sundin and both seem rather angry that Mats may be skating for another NHL club this September.

Me? Not so much.

I was shouted down on a few discussion boards when I brought this up, but if you parsed Mats' comments at the trade deadline, it was clear that he wasn't ruling out playing for another team - he was ruling out playing for another team as a rental player.

Here are the key quotes from his official statement at the trade deadline:

"I have always believed I would finish my career as a Toronto Maple Leaf so the actual request was still a very difficult one for me to contemplate."

Sadly, Mats did not say - "I will retire as a Leaf" or "I will only play for the Leafs" he just said that he believed he would retire as a Leaf.

There's a big difference there.

Mats went on to say:

"I cannot leave my teammates and join another NHL Club at this time [emphasis mine]. I have never believed in the concept of a rental player. It is my belief that winning the Stanley Cup is the greatest thing you can achieve in hockey but for me, in order to appreciate it you have to have been part of the entire journey and that means October through June. I hope everyone will understand and respect my decision."

At this time.

Those are the killer three words right there.

Worse than "General Manager JFJ"

Worse than "President Richard Peddie"

Worse than "Rask for Raycroft"

At this time...

I hope the big Swede sticks around, but if he leaves town I will completely understand and I won't even be surprised. He clearly left that option open with his statement at the trade deadline.

This may be heresy, but if I was a multi-millionaire with two years, at most, left to pursue my ultimate goal and I had the opportunity to pick chose where to ply my trade, I'm not sure that I'd come back to Toronto.

I'm not sure that I'd come back to be the central marketing plank for Peddie and his ilk, knowing that there's no hope for a Cup and the only post-season action the team will see is on a TV.

I'm not sure that I'd come back to grind out 82 games with another set of b-list wingers (more like c and d-list wingers) on a re-building team, having to face the likes of Berger, Cox, DiManno and Simmons day in day out.

When you look at the mess the Leafs are in, if Mats does decide to sign elsewhere, I won't blame him. I'll blame the suits that brought about this ruin.

Lint trap v. ESPN

Last night I made the mistake of reading an ESPN magazine article by Adam Proteau (it was so painfully bad I'm not even going to post the link).

Supposedly it was about the state of the Leafs, but I could have learned more about MLSE and my beloved Blue and White by staring into the lint trap on my dryer for 12 to 15 minutes.

In addition to the lack of any original thought, insight, or quoted sources, Proteau included the requisite update into the angst level of Leafs Nation.

As a member of said nation and one who's feeling rather optimistic about all things Leaf at the moment, I sent Proteau an email asking how reporters always seem to know what Leaf fans are thinking/feeling.

Based on the frequency of this topic appearing in Leaf coverage, I can only conclude that the hockey media have secretly commissioned a statistically valid research study to gauge and track the feelings of Leafs Nation on a week by week (if not day by day) basis so they can report it back to us.

While I wait for Mr. Proteau's response to my email (not sure if that makes me Vladimir or Estragon) I thought I'd simplify things for both the media and Leaf fans everywhere by creating the Leafs Angst Metric (or LAMe)

Based on the United States Homeland Security Advisory Levels, the LAMe enables media types everywhere to free up a paragraph or two worth of space in their articles by simply stating that the angst level in Leafs Nation is orange or red.



Of note: the only time the LAMe will ever likely drop to green or LOW is in the 12 hours immediately following the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup. Exactly twelve hours and one minute after a Stanley Cup win, the media will automatically reset the angst level to Yellow.

I'd walk on the water in your dad's swimming pool...

The Leafs haven’t interviewed a single candidate for the President/GM job, despite having fired JFJ back on January 22.

This comes as no surprise to me.

While I'm no expert on the inner workings of NHL level executive recruitment, I would guess that the vast majority of candidates for the Leafs post are currently under contract with other NHL clubs. Not only does their current contractual status preclude them from being interviewed by MLSE, any reasonable person would also realize that these prospective candidates are a little more focused on their respective team's cup run than interviewing with Peddie and Kirke.

That little bit of logic appears to be of very little interest to Damien Cox, who vomits up 632 words on the fact that the Leafs haven’t conducted any formal interviews for the President/GM post.

According to Cox,

What was a surprise, however, was that Peddie made it clear that he, and the team, don't believe time is of the essence when it comes to hiring a new hockey czar…and the Leafs seem content with the possibility that the "hunt" could linger into July or August.

Can you believe the gumption of MLSE? They’re actually willing to let a month, maybe two, pass between the awarding of the Stanley Cup and the hiring of their next President and GM.

I don’t know about Damien, but if I were looking to make the most important hire my organization has ever faced, I’d certainly want to rush things. I certainly would want to be beholden to false deadlines.

Cox continues:

In two months, no candidates have been interviewed – wouldn't now be a good time to chat with unemployed types like Doug Armstrong or Neil Smith, highly regarded individuals like Hockey Canada's Bob Nicholson or even NHL executive Colin Campbell?

Hmm. It seems to me Cox was front and centre at a certain press conference when MLSE identified the criteria of their next GM. Peddie clearly said (or maybe he just moved his lips and someone else said it) all GM candidates must have prior experience running an NHL club (so long Campbell, no dice Nicholson) and ideally should have won at the NHL level (so much for Armstong).

That leaves Neil Smith.

The man who claims he invented fantasy hockey.

A man who hasn’t had a GM job for a decade (unless you count his 3 weeks on Long Island).

Can you imagine the indignation Cox would muster up for his column if Neil Smith were ever mentioned as a front runner for the Leafs? Oy gevalt.

Back to Cox:

It would have made far more sense for Peddie to declare that an aggressive hunt is on, every possibility is being examined and a new executive saviour will definitely be in place by the entry draft to begin charting a more productive future.

Let’s do some math on this one.

The playoffs will likely wrap up the first week in June.

The entry draft is June 21.

If Peddie were to do what Cox recommends, the Leafs would have, at most, two weeks to interview, negotiate with and ultimately sign their new President/GM. Never mind the time required to get the appropriate permissions to interview and dealing with any other contractual issues.

Does anyone, other than Cox, think this is remotely realistic?

Maybe Leaf fans could chip in a couple of bucks and order up Damien some remedial help so that he can learn to pick-up the phone and call an actual source. I'd love to know what any executive recruiting firm worth it's salt would have to say about procuring a top executive and having them signed sealed and delivered in 10 business days or less.

Yet, that's not only what Cox thinks MLSE should be doing, he's openly castigating them in print for their failure to do so.

What would it take to satisfy this guy?

I also love this aside in Cox's column:

It's worth noting here that the three stars of last night's game were Anton Stralman, Jiri Tlusty and Nik Antropov. Stralman and Tlusty were drafted under Ferguson's leadership, while the contracts of Antropov ($2 million U.S.), goalie Vesa Toskala ($3 million) and defenceman Tomas Kaberle ($4.25 million) were all negotiated by JFJ and are the most salary cap-effective deals the team has.

Funny how Cox fails to mention the other half of that equation. How the NTC5 and the mediocre play of Blake, Raycroft, Wozniewski – all with contracts negotiated by JFJ - were the least salary-cap effective deals the team has and a big reason why JFJ no longer has a job.

Cox concludes:

So while Peddie was ostensibly doing damage control, all it really did was make it abundantly clear that the dazed and confused Leafs are pursuing the future with continued maximum dysfunction as their guide.

Uh, sure Damien. Whatever you say buddy.

Far be it from me to defend MLSE (I'm going to need a shower after typing this) but taking an additional month to hire the one person that this entire organization and fan base will be putting their faith in is the wrong thing to do?

The right thing to do is to commit to a ten day window to find their saviour?

If that’s how Cox defines "dysfunctional" I wonder what's the apt adjective to describe the Toronto Star’s newsroom and Cox’s ability to churn this stuff out for nearly 20 years?

###

For those of you interested in the “PR efforts” Cox refers to, there’s an excellent six minute, 40 second clip of Elliot Friedman interviewing Richard Peddie from Saturday’s CBC game. To view it, surf over to here, click on the “search” option, type in Peddie and Inside Hockey,March 29 should be your top option. (Hopefully, your video feed won’t buffer as badly as mine. And if you do watch, put yourself in Peddie's shoes when he's asked about the Habs marketing efforts with Grade 5 students - I hate that f*cker Peddie with a passion, but he gets full marks for not falling off his seat and laughing at Friedman over that line of questioning.)

The Missing Years

Like pucks lazily drifting past Andrew Raycroft, the reasons for JFJ to be fired are almost too many to count.

The surprise isn't that JFJ’s teams will set a Leaf record for futility by missing the playoffs for three straight years.

The surprise isn’t that a team tagged by its coach as his most talented ever and positioned for a Stanley Cup run is mired in 27^th and on the cusp of a lottery pick.

The surprise isn’t that JFJ took a 100 point franchise and turned it into a soft, underperforming team, handcuffed it with long-term contracts, maxed out the cap and then stripped of its few assets for spare parts.

The surprise is that despite of all this, JFJ lasted as long as he did.

The man was the GM of my favourite team for five years. For half a decade, I watched him run a franchise I’ve followed all of my life and I still don’t have a clue what he was trying to do.

He arrived heralding the stockpiling of picks, but in five years, he traded the teams’ top pick three times and the second pick twice.

He spoke about a new era in developing talent, yet his top pick is playing four minutes a night in the NHL instead of getting big minutes in the minors.

I know that he liked to roll the dice. JFJ habitually sought to acquire high-risk high-reward players like Lindros, Allison, Raycroft, and O’Neill. And in every single case, the risk won. Under JFJ there was never a reward in Leaf land.

For every good contract he signed – Kaberle, Antropov, Poni, Sundin – he signed a bad one: Belfour, Domi, Blake, Kubina, McCabe, Tucker.

People claim his true talent was an eye for waiver wire pick-ups, landing Devereaux, Kilger and Moore. But for every fourth line surprise, there was a fourth line bust: Czerkawski, Pohl, Battaglia, Newbury, Suglabov.

Want to measure his supposed ability to assess talent? Count the number of JFJ acquisitions who can no longer find work in the NHL: Allison, Battaglia, Belfour, Berg, Czerkawski, Green, Khavanov, Lindros, O’Neill, and Slugablov.

I dare anyone to find a comparable list of post-lockout busts signed by a single GM.

In the end, he may be a great guy, a wonderful father and husband. He may have been classy when he knew his time had come, but he set the team I love back years. His incompetence or inability to stand up to the board (or some deadly combination of both) has handcuffed this club for years to come. And for that, I am glad that he’s gone.

He left with the media remarking on his class and his ability to keep his head up. His image ironically buffed by the same mouth breathers and one-fingered typists who called for his head and spent the last month in a daily vigil outside the MLSE boardroom door waiting for the blue and white smoke signaling a new Pope Leafs GM.

JFJ often said he was a reflection of his record, and that’s likely the only spot that he and I will ever agree. If ever there was a truly .500 GM – a man that won as often as he lost – JFJ is it.

Oh, that plan

Buried in a story from Dave Perkins in today's Toronto Star (16/01/08) is this little piece o' news from JFJ:

"The worst thing we did was finish a point out of the playoffs last year and get the 13th draft choice. The year before we missed by two points and got the 13th pick, which we traded away,'' said Ferguson, clearly indicating that a team gone deep in the tank can at least take solace in eventually landing a top draft choice.

"That wouldn't be the worst thing in the world,'' he said of a quality pick, adding that a plan to sacrifice present for future as a method of rebuilding was proposed a couple of years ago – presumably to the same Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment board of directors now said to be shopping his job around.

"That plan was not approved."

My first reaction to this news: at least he tried, I can't believe the deadly combination of stupidity and greed of the MLSE board.

My second reaction (about 15 seconds later): Why isn't that a direct quote from JFJ? It's contained between quotes, but Perkins doesn't have JFJ actually utter those words...

My third reaction (about 0.5 seconds later): Man, JFJ has failed at pretty much everything he's tried to do during his tenure. He has my sympathy for not being able to get a re-build plan approved by the Board (in his defence, maybe a tag-team of Lamoriello and Burke couldn't get such a plan past Peddie and his minions); however, he still blew it when he was charged with putting a competitive team on the ice to try to win now.

I don't mean to kick a guy when he's down (and I've said repeatedly that JFJ deserved to either be fired or extended - none of this no man's land nonsense that MLSE has engaged in) but when you think about the pressures put on him by the MLSE board, stop to consider JFJ's response. Count the number of players he's signed to play for the Blue and White that are no longer in the NHL: Berg, Khavanov, Domi, Green, Belfour, Lindros, Aubin, Allison, O'Neill...soon to be joined by Raycroft and likely Wozniewski too. That's just off the top of my head and it has to be the most by any GM in the league. Factor in the bizarre-o world trade for Yanic Perrault (how's that 32nd overall pick looking for 15 games of an injured 4th line centre looking now?) and you've got one lousy record of work.

This was JFJ's response to a win now mandate?

It's clear to me that despite the Board not supporting his plan, despite the fact that he may be a great guy, despite the fact that he's being needlessly humiliated and generally mistreated by MLSE - JFJ is still an incompetent GM, he made this mess and he needs to go.

The bigger question (the biggest question really) is: can Peddie/the MLSE Board be contained or will it be more of the same misguided direction and meddling no matter who gets hired to run this club?