Cliff Fletcher has not only started a massive rebuilding project, but taken a year off what’s likely to be ugly hockey for the next Leafs GM.
I don’t know – at least not for certain - who the next general manager of the Toronto Maple leafs will be or when he will arrive, but when he does finally show up in the Centre of Universal Losing, he better bring gifts for Cliff Fletcher.
Lots of expensive gifts with great big thank you cards attached.
What the Leafs general manager has done in his brief time as the second coming of himself is break up an old gang (and gang is exactly the right word in describing the core of the now dispersed leadership of the club) and send it on its not so merry way.
Fletcher has cleared some cap space for the new man as well. Not a lot and certainly not a lot in regard to next season, but at least he has the payroll going in the proper direction: down. As time goes by, Fletcher’s replacement will see a return in cap space as a result of today’s steep price to buy out the contracts of players such as Darcy Tucker, Andrew Raycroft and, eventually, Bryan McCabe.
Fletcher has also opened the door to a new coach, Ron Wilson, who has a reputation for working and succeeding with youth and make no mistake; the Leafs will be extremely young up front. The young ones could be without long-time leader Mats Sundin, Tucker gone from the wing and Kyle Wellwood out in Vancouver.
Though he has his critics, several of whom I respect, Fletcher has not only started a massive rebuilding project, but taken a year of what’s likely to be ugly hockey on to his shoulders and off the new guy’s back.
When the next general manager does come in, much of the ugly work that had to be done, the sending off of the long-serving captain, the ousting of the fan-favorite "agitator" and the revamping of the coaching staff will be done.
Assuming the new guy likes the coaching staff that Fletcher has assembled; his life has been made a lot easier. The new GM won’t have to explain why Sundin isn’t worth to the Leafs what he might get from another team or why Tucker might have had a Gordie Howe hat trick upon his return to the Air Canada Centre.
Fans who have howled for change will howl about how the Leafs will be roughed up and flat-out beaten by players who once wore the blue and white, but the new guy coming in will know that he can look forward to a crop of draft picks that Fletcher brought in who have size and, in most cases at least, a budding reputation as character players. He will know that his new team is solid at the starting goaltender position and likely will have a quality backup because Fletcher is already beating the bushes. He will know that the team will have a defence upon which he can build and that there will be at least one player –Jamal Mayers—who will play every night with pride because he’s wearing a Leafs uniform. Mayers will do everything in his considerable power to be a leader of the young men who will be getting a taste of pro hockey (and of losing on a fairly regular basis) for the first time en route to building their careers and the franchise.
(He may also find that Fletcher will have delivered to him an impact player in the form of John Tavares or someone like him should the losing be as bad as many of us suspect, but that’s a column for another time.)
None of what Fletcher has done is perfect and it might not even be the best way to go, but it is different in that it is a radical change from the past and a massive first step in a different direction. That’s a step that has been put off for far too long and one that, as troublesome as it may at first appear, had to be taken.
Most newly minted GMs rarely get such a deal, but in Fletcher they get it handed to them on the day they show up.
Thanks in no small part to an old general manager made new again, taking on the daunting task of rebuilding the Toronto Maple Leafs has been transformed into a job worth taking.
Fletcher has at least begun the process and for his sake, the new guy better be prepared to buy a round of drinks.
