Expectations for 2011-12: Playoffs vs. Lottery

Heading into this offseason a lot of Leafs fans (including this one) believed that addressing the goaltending situation should be management’s number one priority. This sentiment stems from the fact that both James Reimer and Ben Scrivens have produced very little success, at least over a significant period, in the NHL.

We’re approaching September and it doesn’t appear that any move in goal is imminent. There have been the usual rumblings about Roberto Luongo or Jonathan Bernier and, if you dig deeply enough, even Tim Thomas could be considered an option for the Leafs. The situation in Vancouver has the potential to get volatile, especially if they try to start the season with Schneider and Luongo in a platoon. As of today, however, the Canucks appear in no real hurry to ship Roberto out.  

At first, this seems disappointing. Neither Scrivens nor Reimer has demonstrated the sort of consistency required to be a #1 netminder. I would like nothing more than to see the team enjoy some level of success to rescue the fanbase from nearly a decade long abyss of playoff-less hockey. However, after spending some time reviewing the top draft picks from the coming 2013 class, it’s hard not to wonder if one more lottery finish, and the top 5 pick that comes with it, wouldn’t ultimately be the best thing moving forward.

We’ve written a bit about the cap space and contract flexibility the team will enjoy next offseason, with the majority of the Leafs' non-core player deals expiring. This will leave Burke with a few key players (Grabovski, Kessel, Phaneuf, Rielly, Gardiner...etc) and substantial cap space to make a push at big name UFAs (backing up Brinks truck to the homes of Perry and Getzlaf).

If the team can add another top 5 draft pick with a great pedigree we could be looking at the beginning of a very strong core. This would also prove to be quite ironic, as it would bring Burke's ‘rebuild on the fly’ to a close nearly 5 years after he assumed the GM role, but I digress.

Leafs' Prospects: Matt Finn

Matt Finn at Prospect Camp (photo cred: Jack Bolland, Toronto Sun)

Since Brian Burke took over as GM of the Leafs in November of 2008, the Leafs have put together a decent run of apparent draft success outside of the first round.  In his first three drafts, Burke has added Jesse Blacker, Jerry D'Amigo, Brad Ross, Greg McKegg, Josh Leivo, and Petter Granberg as non-first round talent with a legitimate chance at cracking an NHL roster.  If we couple this with the fact that his only apparent 2nd round whiff seems to be Kenny Ryan, a player who has struggled to assert himself at the AHL level and spent the majority of last season in the ECHL, then it's fair to say that the Leafs have done a solid job of adding to their organizational depth in the less projectable rounds of the draft.

With the 35th overall pick in the 2012 draft, the Leafs look like they've added another solid prospect in Guelph Storm defenseman, Matt Finn.

Finn was on the radar for scouts from the beginning of his draft year, ranking 15th in Central Scouting's OHL preliminary rankings, then shooting up to 15th in the North American mid-term rankings before finally settling in at 16th in the final North American rankings.  He's a guy who underwent a fair degree of scrutiny and his game stood up to it, in the eyes of scouts.

With only 4 players on the European Rankings and 3 players from the Goalie Rankings having been taken ahead of Finn, Central Scouting would have projected him to go at 23 and yet he fell to the Leafs at 35.

Finn is a prospect who's very similar to a player the Leafs drafted last year in Stuart Percy.  While Finn's offensive numbers are a little more impressive than Percy's were in his draft year, neither player projects as an especially strong offensive defenseman at the NHL-level.  Like Percy, Finn is often described as "quietly effective" with great poise, decision-making, and a good first pass.  While he doesn't have the flashy skating or offensive flair of guys like Rielly or Gardiner, he does possess the kinds of tools that provide a lot of value to an NHL blueline.

Joe Colborne: As He Is

Scene from 8 1/2

"All the confusion of my life... it has been a reflection of myself.  Myself as I am, not as I'd like to be."  -Marcello Mastroianni, "8 1/2"


"8 1/2" is a semi-autobiographical film by director Federico Fellini where Mastroianni plays the role of Guido, a director with writer's block who, as a result of external pressures from studios, producers, and the media, has constructed a monstrosity of a movie set for a film that has yet to fully take shape in his mind.  The set itself comes to represent the oppressive pressure Guido feels to live up to his past successes and these pressures only further exacerbate his intellectual and artistic impotence.

In Joe Colborne, I see a lot of Fellini's Guido.

Colborne was drafted 16th overall in the 2008 Entry Draft and was always viewed as a project.  While his size and skating made him worthy of a first round selection, The Hockey News described his play as "indifferent" and his skills as "undeniable".

After two solid seasons at the University of Denver, in 2010-11, Colborne made the full-time transition to the AHL's Providence Bruins where he posted a fairly lacklustre 26 points in 55 games and was subsequently traded to the Maple Leafs.  Colborne had more success with the Marlies to close out the 2010-11 season (16 points in 20 games) and spent the first couple months of the 2011-12 season among the AHL leaders in points, earning an invitation to the AHL All-Star Game.  Colborne's point pace slowed to a crawl to close out the season as injuries (he was forced to skip the All-Star Game) and the loss of linemate Joey Crabb seemed to seriously affect his game.

Building to 2013: Technically Not A 5-Year Rebuild

After 7 consecutive years of failing to qualify for the post-season, it’s fair to characterize the mood of devout leaf fans as pessimistic - and that’s probably putting it mildly. Much like the promises of idealist politicians, we’ve been subjected to nearly a decade of speeches from team management with promises of ‘this time will be different’. While we all take great joy in pointing proverbial finger and using revisionist history to lord our superior intellect over MLSE brass, it would appear that finally, perhaps mercifully, this coming year will be different. More specifically, this coming offseason will be different.

With the Blue Jays and Raptors in a perpetual state of rebuild (although the Jays have been a .500 team for almost a decade, and are plagued by an archaic MLB playoff structure, don’t get me started) it’s understandable that we Torontonians have grown tired waiting another season for success. I won’t pretend to know exactly how long Jays or Raps fan will have to wait, but for us, the 2013 offseason could be the crescendo of Brian Burke’s tenure as Leafs' GM.

Upon arriving in Toronto, Burke made strong statements about the forthcoming truculence of the team he would assemble, and the voracity with which the team would approach yearly free agency, memorably referring to it as “our draft”.

Since then the term ‘truculence’ has taken on a more pejorative tone, as the media and fans lament the Leafs' lack of toughness and size throughout the lineup. Likewise the promise of big name free agent signings has gone unfulfilled with misses on Ilya Kovalchuk, Brad Richards, and the Sedin brothers (who never actually become UFAs, leaving Burke with an expensive plane ticket to Sweden to visit one Jonas Gustavsson) to name a few.

We've all been quick to judge, and in some instances to mock, Brian Burke for his many rules and ideologies; a self imposed trade embargo during the Christmas holidays and rallying against the long term, cap circumventing contracts of Kovalchuk, Luongo, Richards, and Weber, to name a few. However, Burke has quietly put the team in an enviable position heading into the 2013 free agent market, with a substantial amount of cap space.

What's The Point of This CBA Exactly?

Labour uncertainty is the topic of the day for fans of the NHL with the threat of a lockout hanging over our heads once again.  It wasn't so long ago that we were forced to sit through a winter without hockey and now we're forced to ask, "for what?"

At the time, I was more or less on board with a lot of what the owners were saying.  Stability for existing franchises and competitive balance through a salary cap were things that I could get behind.

We've now played 7 seasons of hockey under the current CBA and there are some things that certainly seem broken to the casual eye.  The NHL has presented its initial offer to the NHLPA and after taking some time for sober refection, I find myself wondering if the first lockout accomplished anything at all.

As fans, we were consistently subjected to the words "cost certainty" and "parity" by Gary Bettman as the league sought to implement a salary cap while the players resisted -- this, we were told, was the reason there was no hockey.

Ultimately, the owners dug their heels in more deeply than the players and got more or less what they wanted while the players saw a 24% rollback in their salaries.  The salary cap was initially set at $39M and its year-over-year growth was tied to league revenues.

Since then, the cap has risen to over $70M with a salary floor over $54M and we find ourselves more or less at square one.

Toronto Maple Leafs Offseason Expectations

There isn't much that's easier than being indignant on the internet.  A cursory glance through your Twitter feed will back this up, as will a look through the comments section on basically any online TSN article about the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Perhaps the only thing that's easier is to explain away mistakes your team has made after the fact.  Fandom, in many cases, can breed an unwavering idolatry that can convince us to accept things that we probably shouldn't.

In an effort to keep myself honest, I try to enter every major period on the hockey calendar with a set of 'dream' and 'nightmare' scenarios pre-established.  What outcome would I see as a success?  What constitutes a failure?  These are questions I ask, and generally document, before the fact so that I can evaluate management decisions as dispassionately as possible.

With the NHL offseason halfway to its conclusion,  I thought I'd look at what my expectations were heading into the offseason and how close the Leafs are to achieving what I would define as a successful result.

The Draft


I published my dream and nightmare scenarios for the draft in mid-April and while the Leafs never had the opportunity to draft the player I had my eyes on, Alex Galchenyuk, they did land one of my three consolation prizes in Morgan Rielly.  The player the Leafs took in the second round, defenseman Matt Finn, is a guy I certainly did not expect them to even have a shot at with the 35th overall selection.

While it would have been great to land a high-ceiling forward who could slot into the lineup sooner rather than later, it's tough to have much of a problem with how things went down at the draft.  Short of having traded up, or possibly drafting Grigorenko, things couldn't have gone too much better.