Yes, in this day and age, it is extraordinarily unpopular to suggest that Burke’s plan hasn’t worked, as the Leafs find themselves floating between 2nd and 7th on a daily basis and because Kessel (somewhat shocking) and Lupul (unbelievably shocking) are leading the league.
I am a believer in looking at things long-term and think there is no way in hell either player keeps it up. (Kessel has already dropped well off his pace of earlier this season, as he is now on pace for 100 points instead of over 200.) So I continue looking at deals that both made sense and didn’t.
On December 3, 2009
- Leafs got: Phillippe Paradis, LW, drafted 27th overall in 2009
- Canes got: Jiri Tlusty, LW, drafted 13th overall in 2006
Tlusty is the perfect example of the Leafs inability to develop in-house talent.
He was advertised as a sniper when he was drafted (by JFJ). As usual, they couldn’t make up their minds with him: he played for both a junior team and the Marlies in his first pro year, and played for both the Marlies and the Leafs in his second. When he played for the Leafs he played on the third or fourth line, as if this Russian sniper was going to miraculously turn into a checker because Maurice thought he would. (I emphasize Russian because we all know that, save a few players like Fedorov, very few Russian hockey players come over and learn new tricks in the NHL.)
Of course he didn’t and he became a pretty significant draft bust. (He was the highest pick of the Leafs since Antroshit.)
But he was never given the chance: he had one decent partial year in the AHL (66 points in 66 games) after they had given up on him the second time but he never had clear expectations, like virtually every other Leafs draft pick, and he never had a clearly defined role or a role suited to his skills.
For the record, the right thing to do would have been
- if you’re going to send him to junior, keep him there all year,
- give him time in the AHL until he starts playing like the player you drafted, i.e. until he starts putting up point-per-game numbers and you do this before you bring him up to the NHL,
- once he is a top 3 forward in the AHL, give him an extended (i.e. season-long) shot at top 6 in the NHL.
The same thing has been seen with Kadri: now that he has a place where he can learn the pro game, he is excelling and maybe he isn’t a bust like he looked earlier but the Leafs took ages to figure it out.
So obviously it didn’t work and Tlusty needed to be traded but for what? As usual, Burke traded him for a player whose skill set he preferred, not necessarily a better player. Paradis was drafted lower (which doesn’t always mean a lot) and one look at his junior numbers indicates that he was never much of a scorer.
So, first Burke has traded a guy with offensive upside for a guy who probably doesn’t have it. (Paradis has, to date, an illustrious 6 points in 25 AHL games.)
But second, Tlusty had at least managed some mediocre output in the NHL (slightly below 0.3ppg, which is like a third liner) and actually nearly a point-per-game in the AHL, Paradis has evidently played a couple games for the Blackhawks (his new home) but that is it.
So again Burke traded a player whose game he didn’t like for a less good player whose game he did like.
It’s not the first time and it’s not the last but, my question is, since when did Burke have the monopoly on understanding what wins? He hasn’t exactly lit it up in Toronto, and we all know how he failed to take a very talented Vancouver team where they needed to get to.
Why is it acceptable to Toronto hockey fans to routinely trade more talent for less? Talent isn’t everything. Talent without work is not much – witness Tlusty – but work without talent is usually even less.
Tlusty is currently doing not much for Carolina, which is expected and fine. He is a bust and I am not for a second denying he should have been traded. Paradis was part of the first Versteeg deal, a deal that I did not like at the time but which, had it not been replaced by a worse deal later, rendered the Leafs better, so we can’t say the Tlusty / Paradis deal was bad. (And I have been proven to be wrong: Versteeg was nowhere near as bad in Toronto as people claim, Stalberg has been not much in Chicago – though he is having his best season to date as I write this – and DiDomenico has never recovered from his injury to be the top 6 me and a lot of other people thought he could be…in fact he was in the ECHL last I checked.)
We can just say it is indicative of Burke’s often bizarre assessment of value, and how he is willing, more often than not, to give up talent for workers, something that, if practiced frequently and consistently, will render the Leafs fairly impotent come “big game” time. (Now, I must admit that I thought this team would have a lot of trouble scoring this year and so far I am very wrong about that.)