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Relief, that’s the feeling I get when watching our young and improving defenseman Luke Schenn night in and night out this season. Oh admit it you were a touch worried as I was that Schenn might not ever reach this day but I think we can all just say it and say it with pride, Luke Schenn is a stud. Although he was never really that bad for most of last season the fact is Schenn was unfairly judged (as a 20 year old defenseman in his second season) by most Leafs fans. [more…]
Nothing gets Leafs Nation into a frenzy quicker than some good old fashioned trade rumours and with the recent news breaking that Brian Burke is "open for business" it was obviously going to make headlines. Bob McKenzie was told by his sources that the Leafs had an offer on the table involving two bottom six forwards coming to Toronto for one of our current NHL bottom six forwards and an AHL player. Burke basically inferred the offer was half way decent so it likely would have solidified our bottom six forward lines slightly, but nothing to really get worked up about.
There has been extensive and rampant debate, spanning almost two full seasons, on the value of one Mikhail Grabovski. I personally have had more than a few pleasant debates in the comments section of MLHS specifically regarding this player and his skill sets. Oddly enough, even now, when his contributions border on the insanely obvious, Grabovski's name is often overlooked when discussing the reasons for the Leafs early success. I know and understand that many on this site, including the more prominent bloggers, are not fans of Mr Grabovski's game. I am here to ask you all to take another look.
Okay, so it took a while to get to the post game wrap up 'round here. What can I tell you, I was waylaid by ecstasy (NOT the pharmaceutical kind); and that sort of joy has been in kind of short supply for Leaf fans since the lockout. Aside from the 4-3 Leaf OT Victory, I was enjoying (via the wonders of the PVR) the Ticats' triumphant 30-3 curbstomping of the Argonauts to formally clinch a playoff berth. I can tell you from personal experience as a Leafs fan for more than 35 years and a Ticats fan since the days of Jason Maas, there haven't been a lot of nights like that in recent days. Good times.Here's how the Leafs game went as I saw it (note: this is an impressionist recap, not an excursion into hyper-reality. If you want that, wait for James Cameron's next 3-D extravaganza): [more…]
Week one of the Toronto Maple Leafs schedule is in the books, and while it only featured two games, there is plenty to talk about as far as the season goes. Â The Maple Leafs are off to a 2-0 start, having won their second game of the season nearly one month ahead of the time they got win two last season.
Through week one of the season, here are the Maple Leafs player power rankings, as seen by me. [more…]
After what seemed like a lifetime of waiting for fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the new look squad hit the ice Thursday night for their home opener against the arch rival Montreal Canadiens, and with it marked the true dawning of a new age in Leafs Nation.
While it's true the hiring of Ron Wilson and Brian Burke will go down as the day the team began to turn the page on years of management misfortune, and the Dion Phaneuf day could very well end up being the trade that sparks the team forward much like the Doug Gilmour trade before it, Thursday night's season premiere was really the first time since all this has taken place that it was truly a different roster.
Gone were the incumbents of past regimes, It was finally Brian Burke's team. Â Having flipped the entire roster (sans Tomas Kaberle and Jeff Finger) Burke's vision of the team could finally be implemented, his stamp beginning to form.
And it was, for one game at least, as advertised. [more…]
At this time last year, Jerry D'Amigo was a little known Maple Leafs' draftee who had been passed over 157 times by other clubs only a few months before. After a banner year at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the NCAA and a brilliant run at the World Juniors, the not even 20 year old D'Amigo currently finds himself with an NHL contract, an invite to training camp, and a legitimate shot at making his dreams come true as soon as this fall. That was last year. Now let's take a look at some of the names that could be making some serious headway up the Leafs' organizational depth charts in 2010-2011.
"Being a kid growing up just outside Toronto, you always want to play for your team you watched growing up, and Toronto's my team."
It was one of the last things Andrew Engelage said after a lengthy discussion at the Ricoh Coliseum, but it definitely resonated the loudest.
There's nothing quite like the story of the home-grown athlete. Everyone likes asking Oakville's John Mitchell what it's like to put on the Leafs sweater every day, or trying to find some way to relate to Jesse Blacker's being drafted by his local club. But when adversity is thrown into the mix, when a player has to go through some degree of hardship to make it to not only the level he wants to be, but for the team he wants to play for, that's when a story becomes a best seller.
Last Wednesday (September 1st), Toronto's MasterCard Centre for Excellence, the Maple Leafs' own practice facility, played host to the 2010 NHLPA Rookie Symposium in association with trading card leaders Upper Deck and Panini America. MLHS' own Gus Katsaros was in attendance, and has kindly provided audio from his own conversation, as well as portions of a larger media scrum Q&A, with Leafs' top prospect Nazem Kadri.
Midway through the month of July, I had the privilege of chatting with Dave Poulin, Vice President of Hockey Operations with the Toronto Maple Leafs, for an article appearing in Maple Leafs Annual.
Having a professional background in publishing, I was not the least surprised that limitations on available space, plus design and layout constraints, resulted in the necessity to crop certain parts of the interview.
With the Annual due to hit stores next week, I thought I'd share a few of the "lost excerpts" from the cutting room floor in which Poulin offers his thoughts on the progress of the Toronto Marlies, as well as the emergence of the NCAA as a growing prospect pipeline.
Think of it as the equivalent of a "DVD extra" to your copy of MLA.
Toronto Maple Leafs General Manager, Brian Burke should have uttered one phrase to explain the situation, one simple little phrase to envelope the reasoning for the Phil Kessel trade;
“Our picks in our vision of where we ended up are overvalued in accordance to the available crop of prospects.â€
But in Toronto, to admit that in what’s deemed as a ‘rebuild’ would have been a PR disaster.
Despite popular opinion, he wasn’t wrong.
The world is no longer flat, it’s round .. like a full-cirle
