End of the Year Sentiments

So the curtain comes down on the 2009-2010 Maple Leafs season. I know many readers are upset because we as Leaf fans must once again adopt and follow an entirely different team as a sort of playoff hockey avatar in order to fully enjoy the postseason (I find the only way to really get in to it is to pick a surrogate rooting interest). The angst is ramped up in Leaf land as well because the team finished so low in the standings, yet come draft day the guys clustered around our table won’t be studying anything more intently than the lunch menu, because we won’t likely have a pick for the first day and a half (unless Burkie has a miracle relating to a certain Czech defenceman tucked up inside those French cuffs).

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Good News: Big Picture Dept.

I know, I know, when last we met, I promised you that the next installment in these studies in positivity would focus on Nikolai Kulemin.

Well, I lied.  Sue me.  Instead of discussing an individual player, I’m going to make some more general team-wide observations.  Don’t like it?  Line up at window 106 between the hours of 1 and 1:05 p.m., fill out the forms in triplicate, be sure to bring your receipt and three forms of photo I.D. and  the counter staff will be happy to refund in full the money you paid for these charming and entertaining visits to my mind.  Really, though, following Bruce Boudreau’s logic concerning the Ovechkin hit on Brian Campbell (and the obvious liability of the end boards and equally obvious innocence of Ovie), it’s not my fault that I broke my promise to you;  it’s your fault for reading that promise in the first place. +Continue Reading

Good News: Tyler Bozak Edition.

Tyler Bozak is Happy. You Should Be Too.

Twice in the last week – once after the Tampa Bay game, once during the first intermission of the Oilers game – we’ve had the opportunity to watch Tyler Bozak do interviews for television. Twice during the past week, he’s stood there in the hallway outside the Leaf dressing room, spiky hair soaked with sweat, talking first to Paul Hendrick, then to Elliotte Friedman, with a giant freaking grin on his face. The big grin on his face tells you that Tyler Bozak is a happy young man. He’s got six goals and eleven assists in twenty-three games as a twenty-three year old rookie centreman for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and he’s making $875,000 with another 2.8 million dollars worth of bonuses on the table. Of course he’s happy. Why the hell wouldn’t he be happy?

The big grin also tells you he’s a young man. Those of a certain age can’t help but be struck immediately by Bozak’s youthful appearance. He seems to have a little acne here and there, which makes him look even more like the kid behind the counter at Taco Bell than he otherwise might, but more than anything else you can see the excitement of a young man in his eyes and in the corners of his mouth when he simply cannot supress the grin that wants to get out. Doing those interviews, you can tell that he is absolutely stoked, the way only a young player – who hasn’t been doing this sort of thing since Chelios was a child – can possibly be. +Continue Reading

Churn, Churn, Churn: An Update on the Plan

Let’s get one thing straight:  this year is a write-off.  The rest of the games scheduled for the Maple Leafs are not happening, at least not in any meaningful sense.  Instead, the events  you will be watching on your large-screen TVs  over the course of twenty-six evenings littered throughout the next two and a half months are best considered nought but a demonstration or experiment of sorts.

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Good News! Luke Schenn Edition

Since posting the parable of Owen the other day, and most especially since reviewing the commentary appended thereto, it has come to my attention that:

1. The Tragically Hip suck or else the Tragically Hip are the very Platonic embodiment of the concept of “win”.   It is not at all clear which of these two statements concerning the properties of the Tragically Hip inclines towards truth, yet the truth is said to be obvious, immutable and beyond the realm of debate;
2. It is a very good idea to proofread what you have frantically typed in a guilty paroxysm of nostalgic reminiscence before hitting the “publish” button.  Failure to do so may have the inattentive rookie blogger combining various teams, their nicknames and game results in a charming but utterly abstract and completely fictional goulash of confusion.  In the unlikely event this is not the effect one is really attempting to achieve, this little pro tip may help you avoid embarrassment;
3. It is quite possible that I am the first person on earth and in the history of ever to reference both the Three Stooges and Waiting for Godot in the same sentence.  Now I’ve gone and done it in consecutive posts!  Don’t be expecting this level of achievement in every installment, kids, outstanding performances have a way of regressing to the mean;
4. My theory of road trips, nascent and ill-developed though it may be, is fertile ground for graduate study.  Even more startlingly, the road trip is fertile ground for reality television.  How has there not been a Big Brother style reality show centred around the road trip.  And no, I haven’t forgotten about the Amazing Race; pay attention man, those dudes travel in pairs, not triads.  As an aside, I wonder how many other areas of human endeavour are equally of interest to academics and reality TV producers?
5. I somehow managed to omit from the story the fact that my buddies and I attended a cocktail mixer at the IMF.  Trust me, you don’t know from fun until you’ve partied with international debt specialists in a brightly-lit impersonal and institutional room in the middle of the afternoon; and
6. At least some of you are seeing some of the same positive developments in certain Maple Leaf players that I am.

Before we get to the subject of today’s post, Luke Schenn, a preliminary word if you will about the title of these entries:  +Continue Reading

A Manifesto of Sorts: Road Trips and Owen’s Mistake

Alec has asked me to add my two cents hereabouts from time to time, and I’ve agreed to do so with some trepidation.  For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Junior, from Heroes in Rehab: the blog.  I don’t want to step on the toes of any of the other contributors on the site, so I want to contribute something a little different from the others.  What follows is, at it turns out, a bit of a (lengthy, sorry about that) manifesto for what I hope to produce in the coming weeks for you all.  Some of it’s even about hockey and the Leafs!  I don’t really see my self as the Stuart Smalley of Leafs Nation, and the affirmations I offer will be far from daily, but…well, just read, won’t you?

We're Good Enough, We're Smart Enough and Gosh Darn it People Like Us.

One lousy heart-stopping, craptastic win-that-almost-wasn’t against the Thrashers Predators (update: oops, thanks Nights, I’m an idiot.  Stupid interchangeable southeastern teams!).  One crummy “W” from a five game road trip through the Southeast, the division where NHL hockey goes to die.  The Maple Leafs can’t be happy with the way that worked out.  When the trip began ten days ago, it seemed obvious that the Leafs were expecting to get pasted by Ovechkin and the Caps (first clue: starting Vesa Toskala); after getting the better of Bruce Boudreau’s squad a couple of times earlier this year, it was essentially a foregone conclusion that the Blue & White would have the least amount of fun in a DC amphitheatre since Abraham Lincoln, and that’s exactly how it worked out.  But they had to be hoping for more out of matches against Dixie’s puck-playing tomato cans: Nashville, Atlanta, Tampa and Florida.

Of course we know now that it didn’t work out that way.  Much to the chagrin of the local populace, Ron Wilson, Brian Burke and the team have arrived home with only two points to declare at Customs.  As far as road trip expectations go, this is the equivalent of a “buddies road trip to Vegas” turning into “an insurance seminar in Peoria.” +Continue Reading