Mike Komisarek got waived yesterday. It’s about time. Hopefully somebody takes him. But it doesn’t really matter as the Leafs can afford to pay him in the AHL anyway. $4.5 million per year for:
Category: Sports
The Campaign to Fire Dave Nonis: David Steckel
Anaheim Ducks get: David Steckel, 31, C Leafs get: Ryan Lasch, RW/LW; 7th Round Pick Before I knew who Steckel was, I was really upset when the Leafs traded a 4th round pick for him back in October of 2011. This is because I looked at his hockey-reference.com profile and not his NHL.com profile and …
New NHL Divisions
The NHL Board of Governors just approved this realignment plan. I am, for the most part, all for it. The plan was necessitated by the Thrashers moving from Atlanta to Winnipeg. Back in May of 2011, I discussed the problems for the current six-division system. Since the move, the Zombie Thrashers have been playing in …
Nazem Kadri’s 2013 NHL Performance
Based on nearly half of this bastardized “season,” the remarks I made about Kadri were wrong. And, provided he keeps up this point-per-game pace – and there is no guarantee that he will or won’t – his emergence as a legitimate top 6 forward in the NHL stands as a reminder to people like me …
On Your Way, Jose: Raptors Trade Calderon
You may wonder why I haven’t yet started a “Campaign to fire Bryan Colangelo” in this space. Well, there are two main reasons. To this day, I do not know basketball like I know hockey. At this moment, without cable and without league pass, I watch way more college basketball than NBA basketball, and I …
The Campaign to Fire Dave Nonis: Joffrey Lupul Extension. Plus my thoughts on the Leafs’ first game of 2013
Dave Nonis took a step in the wrong direction when he resigned Joffrey Lupul instead of trading him or letting him walk. Lupul becomes only the second Leafs player to be signed through the 2017-18 season, when he will be 34. (JVR is the other.) Lupul will make $5.25 million per season.
The Campaign to Fire Dave Nonis: Pre-2013 Transactions
I already discussed the Lombardi deal. Lets talk about what else Dave Nonis has done since taking over.
The Campaign to Fire Dave Nonis – Matthew Lombardi
With Burke gone, and with Nonis as yet an unknown entity as a Leafs GM, I don’t really know what to call my latest evaluations of Leafs trades, so maybe I will retroactively change it to something else if I am indeed forced to launch a campaign to fire Nonis, but the way he has …
2013 Maple Leafs Season Preview
I begin this season for the first time in a few years not having to preface the title with “The Campaign to Fire Brian Burke.” It was interesting to note the number of Leafs players mourning his firing. If he did one thing in his tenure, he created a culture of loyalty. In organizing my …
The Campaign to Fire Brian Burke: Lockout to Lockout
Only one team in the entire 30 team NHL went from the last lockout (2004-05) to this one without a single playoff appearance: the Toronto Maple Leafs. Only four teams missed the playoffs at least 5 times: the Oilers (6 times), the Islanders and the Thrashers. One of these teams has a pretty good excuse: …
Dwight Howard Trade August 2012
Putting Howard’s ridiculous, childish behaviour – which perhaps only seems so childish because it has been amplified by our new “social media” technology – which caused this trade, I want to try to think about it from a purely practical perspective. Denver gets: Andre Iguodala (from Philly) Iguodala: 28, SG/SF: 37.7 MPG; 14.6 PP36, 5.6 …
Rick Nash Trade
So I have been on a business trip this past week and didn’t have time to blog about what will probably go down as the biggest NHL trade of the summer of 2012. (You know, unless something wackier goes down.) But just as an aside, the Rangers re-signed Anton Stralman for 2 years at around …
The Campaign to Fire Brian Burke: Nikolai Kulemin
Today the Leafs extended RFA Nikolai Kulemin.
The Best Defense is a Good Offense: the Professional Hockey Writer’s Association and 57 Years of Screwing the Pooch on the Norris Trophy
The Best Defense is a Good Offense On Lidstrom’s retirement, I hypothesized that he might be one of the three best defencemen in NHL history. I did this based on one thing: Norris trophy wins. But the more I thought of it, the more I thought that was ridiculous. The PHWA had just awarded two …
Summer 2012 NHL Trades: Some Thoughts
Ducks: 2nd round pick; Islanders: Visnovsky How the Islanders got Visnovsky for a 2nd pick is beyond me. I guess he had his worst offensive year in nearly a decade last year, so that’s why. But given that he automatically becomes their 2nd best defenceman (that’s a guess), and is an underpay, and lets them …
Raptors’ 2012 NBA Draft
This year the Raptors clearly drafted by need and I can’t say I’m happy about it. In my recent review of the Leafs’ 2012 draft I examined the reasons to draft by talent and by need (and why, if you can determine who is the most talented, it makes sense to draft by talent and …
The Campaign to Fire Brian Burke: Schenn for JVR
Aka: The Time Riley Was Totally Wrong About a Leafs Trade Toronto Maple Leafs get: James Van Riemsdyk, 23, LW: 47G, 52A for 99P in 196 games, +13 14:03 ATOI. That’s an 82 game average of 20G, 22A for 42P. Cap Hit: $4.25 million through 2018 Salary: $2.5 million per year in ’13 to $5 …
The Campaign to Fire Brian Burke: the 2012 NHL Draft
There are basically two approaches to drafting that GMs can take: drafting by need and drafting by talent. Let’s think about both briefly before looking at what the Leafs did this year.
2012 NBA Champions
Here is my utterly irrational post about a basketball series I watched probably 15 (basketball) minutes of:
The 2012 LA Kings: Do I Have to Eat My Words? And Other Thoughts
Unlike virtually everyone I knew, I was very much on Philly’s side when they traded away their supposed franchise players last summer. (Though not so much when they signed their supposed franchise goalie.) And through the regular season, it certainly looked like I was right. Of course now the Kings have won the Cup and …
The Hockey Hall of Fame Bias towards “Last time we won the cup was…”
The more I went through previous Hockey Hall of Fame admissions for a previous blog entry, the more I became aware of a pattern: the sheer number of inductees who played for a franchise’s last cup winner. Memory is an extraordinarily powerful force and it seems like the memory of a franchise’s “last great team” …
The Campaign to Fire Brian Burke: The 2011-2012 Maple Leafs Report Card
This is my report card for our 2011-2012 Maple Leafs’ season.
Fuck you, NCAA
I really mean it: fuck you.
The Campaign to Fire Brian Burke: Grabovski
I like Grabovski. He is probably my favourite forward on the Leafs at the moment. But liking him has nothing to do with sound hockey decisions and this contract is not a sound hockey decision.
The Campaign to Fire Brian Burke: Aulie for Ashton
Keith Aulie traded to Tampa Bay by Toronto for Carter Ashton With this trade, the last non-Phaneuf piece of the fabled Phaneuf trade leaves Toronto.
The NBA still needs to adopt the CFL crossover rule in order to be fair
A quarter of the way through the season, it is already apparent, as it seems to be every season, that some decent western conference teams will be left out of the playoffs for yet another year. Here are the standings of the top 20 teams by winning percentage:
The Campaign to Fire Brian Burke: Phillippe Paradis
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.
The Campaign to Fire Brian Burke: the ’11-’12 Leafs Preview
Cast your mind back a few years to when Burke was rumoured to be the first choice as Leafs’ GM, despite already having a job. There was a lot of hype by his supporters – and Leaf fans in general – about how he would change things, how he would be different than JFJ specifically.
The Campaign to Fire Brian Burke: Clarke MacAthur
As I said last year, signing MacArthur was a great risk. The contract was low, because MacArthur had just won an arbitration award which was then declined. He had everything to prove as he had come in to the NHL after a pretty great WJC but then amounted to not all the much with the …
The Campaign to Fire Brian Burke: Matt Lashoff for Alex Berry and Stefano Giliati
Leafs acquire Matt Lashoff for Alex Berry and Stefano Giliati