Leafs Acquire Versteeg

dlb wrote:

@ Gary Shields:
Burke drafted Scandanavians this year not named the twins. Who would have predicted him doing that eh?

Actually, it doesn’t surprise me at all. He’s made it pretty clear, he’s looking for talent, wherever he can find it as we don’t have too many options for upgrading the roster.

I laugh when I read posts about how Burke will let this guy or that guy go because he didn’t bring him in. Yep, that’s it… that’s how he evaluates players. ‘Oh, you’re not mine, I had better dump you for someone good like I would pick…’ Classic.

He is going to select the players that make the most sense to achieve his goal, and that’s to be the next GM that wins a cup in Toronto. He doesn’t give a shit about where they came from, what team they played for or who brought them into the organization. As he said in one interview, “If they start playing hockey on Mars, we’ll be looking for talent there…” or something, to that effect.

The bottom line, this isn’t about ego or any of that crap. This is a driven, intelligent man, who knows what he wants to accomplish and is dead serious about pulling it off.

It’s kind of funny how frequently it is assumed that many people on here must be some low IQ knuckle dragger, drunk in a bar slurring Go Leafs!

I’m sure there are many people on here who are quite well educated, drunks in a bar slurring Go Leafs!

@ Bob is your uncle:

Hahaha, well it looks like you and Burke are on the same page.

He said that when he first came here in a TV interview. The media were all over him “What are you going to do? Your predecessors gave away all your draft picks. You have almost no tradable assets, and nothing in the farm system. How do you think you’re going to be able to make any meaningful improvements to this team?” [being the knowledgeable hockey people that they are...]

He responded that he would go outside of the normal channels and find whatever talent he could. Yes, he would go the Colledge route, but also to Europe and other places. If they start playing hockey on Mars, we’ll be looking for talent there!

Apparently not a lot of people were listening to him. He has gone and done exactly what he said he was going to do, and rather successfully I might add.

But many people go on about, it’s just his ego talking, it’s all just bluster, he only does this and that for the attention, he only likes players of a certain nationality, etc.

Funny, but that description sounds more like Don Cherry, someone many people believe to be the greatest hockey mind, well, on Mars probably…