In His Own Image

Reading eastern newspapers, as I am prone to do, watching TSN or CBC and following websites that cover hockey one thing is clear. Brian Burke is being touted as "the Messiah, the Saviour, of a franchise that has been in hockey's wilderness for 42 years. From the glory years of Keon, Mahovolich, Bower, Baun and others its been four decades since the Leafs hoisted the Stanley Cup.
And like him or hate him, Burke is building a team "in his own image, a team that may bear some resemblance to the Anaheim Ugly Ducks who led the league in almost every bad boy category in 2007 and then raised the Stanley Cup.
Leaf fans are confident that history will repeat itself but the question is how long will it take?
Reading Maple Leaf fan comments its now and its going to happen this year, but the always quoteable Burke may not share that dream quite yet.
I don't know if we're good enough to make the playoffs yet. That's our goal and I think we're a lot closer than we were five days ago and we'll keep trying to improve the club."
Toronto has added defencemen Mike Komisarek from Montreal, Francious Beauchemin from Anaheim and Garnet Exelby from Atlanta, forwards Colton Orr from the Rangers and Colin Stuart from the Thrashers and, yesterday, goaltender Jonas Gustavsson.
Toughness added to be sure but when Burke won with the Ducks there were plenty of skilled players to provide balance with the tough guys.
Goaltending for the Leafs has to be a huge question mark.
While Burke made it clear that Toskala will enter training camp as No. 1, the fact that Gustavsson will have a chance to snatch the position away from the Finn likely was a factor in Gustavsson deciding on Toronto over Dallas, San Jose and Colorado. In other words is the Leafs present goaltending so bad an untested rookie easily can become number one?
Whether or not the Leafs capture the Stanley Cup in 2010 the colorful Burke always provides some great quotes and is a media mans dream for an interview.
Some of my favourites follow:
Sometimes (Mikhail) Grabovski spent more time on the ice than the Zamboni. These (forwards) were getting knocked down and picking their teeth out of the glass all year. Let's see how they do with a little toughness around," he said."Our goal is to make the playoffs next year, we're going to have to make some changes to do it. We're going to be a different team.'
"I like a lot of hitting. I like a lot of fighting. We have a passive group. All year long, when a trainer was on the ice - it was always our trainer- that really bothered me.
"It will be a more hostile group in the fall."
The biggest thing we've done (is create) competition here for the first time in a long time," Burke said yesterday of his work the past week. "If you are coming to training camp and your only concern is where you're going to sit on the bus or who your roommate is going to be, you are not going to get the level of push you need to excel.
"Part of the problem here has been this entitlement that players feel. We need job security issues and I think we've got those now."
You need some knuckles on the blue line, too, some five-minute majors. I think with the changes we've made, there's some bite there, there's some size there."
If we tampered, we're pretty poor at it because those two kids are still sitting in Vancouver."