Not only do the Leafs get some toughness and locker room presence, it shows Brian Burke has a heart.
On the surface the deal that brought Brad May to Toronto looks pretty much like nothing for next to nothing and if May, 37, and very near the end of the line doesn't get a contract offer from the Leafs for next season (or opts not to sign one) that's exactly what it will be.
One of the side agreements to the deal is that if May doesn't sign for next season the Ducks don't get the announced sixth-round draft pick in return.
But there are some practical issues and some intangible ones regarding this deal and they are interesting and intriguing on several fronts.
For one, Burke is adding toughness to a team that showed an appalling lack of same in recent games versus division rivals Buffalo and Ottawa in the Air Canada Centre. May doesn't throw them like he used to (and he used to throw them a lot), but he plays a physical game and knows how to hit. He still has respect around the league in that regard and just the thought of him being dressed for a Leafs came is going to change the way teams view playing the Leafs at home or away.
The Leafs also get a quality guy with a Stanley Cup ring and a reputation for being a stand-up guy on the ice and in the locker room. That's no small thing in the NHL these days. I've known Brad May the person as well as the hockey player dating back to his days in junior hockey. He has a great attitude and he brings it to work every day and night. He's probably a bit beyond changing the chemistry in the locker room in a big way, but he'll do it in a thousand little ways and the Leafs will both walk and skate a little taller because he's one of them.
I remember the day I first saw him playing junior for Niagara Falls when the OHL team actually played in that city. He took on Eric Lindros, one-on-one, and once he did that his teammates skated the rest of the game without fear.
I also remember the first day he showed up in Buffalo. It was just an introductory press conference, a dog and pony show to entice the season ticket buyers into getting out their wallets, but May, Buffalo's first pick in 1990 and the 14th player taken overall, donned skates and a Sabres sweater and skated around the old Memorial Auditorium ice jumping into the glass just to see it rattle. When he came off, he grinned and said he just couldn't wait; he had to get a feel for the place.
That smile, that attitude, they have not left him.
Once, very early in his career, he stepped in front of teammate Larry Playfair, one of the most feared fighters in the game, but a player who was on the downside of his career, much the way May is today. A young tough guy that night was looking to make his name against a legend, but May stepped in and handled him for Playfair.
Afterward, May said he thought Playfair had been on the ice for a long shift and might have been tired and the challenger was aware of that. He didn't want his teammate to possibly get hurt. Playfair was not unappreciative. "In my entire career I never had anyone do that for me," he said. "To have a teammate who would think like that, I won't forget that."
May is unforgettable in the hearts and minds of Sabres fans, having scored the goal that eliminated the Boston Bruins in the first round of the 1993 playoffs and put the Sabres into the second round for the first time in a decade. He went around legendary defenceman Ray Bourque to do it, prompting the now legendary "May Day" call from broadcaster Rick Jeanneret.
May always approached hockey that way.
When he was traded from the Sabres, I honestly thought he was going to cry. He loved it there and his teammates and the fans loved him, but he accepted it as part of the game and was never bitter. I saw him at all his NHL stops through the years and he was that kind of player for the Vancouver Canucks, the Phoenix Coyotes and the Colorado Avalanche and then the Mighty Ducks. Late in his career, in Anaheim, I saw him playing the same game, beloved by a new batch of teammates and, after a solid win vs. Ottawa in the 2005 Stanley Cup final, reveling in being a Cup champion like few players before him.
He didn't sleep for days. He showed up everywhere he was asked and he even brought the Stanley Cup to the Rose Bowl parade, waving a silver chalice for hockey on a day devoted to college football across America.
May is no saint. He is infamous for slashing Columbus forward Steve Heinze across the face with his stick. He got 20 games for his actions and he deserved them, but he had the decency to know he had made a serious mistake and was quick to seek out Heinze and apologize for it. He also was named in a lawsuit by Steve Moore regarding a reported comment that there was a "bounty" on Moore prior to the ugly incident that ended with Moore suffering a broken neck after an attack by Todd Bertuzzi. He was later omitted from the ongoing legal proceedings. An altercation with Kim Johnsson, then of the Minnesota Wild, cost him some bad press and a three-game suspension in the 2007 playoffs. The incident added to May's reputation as a sometimes too emotional player on the ice, but it also cemented his reputation as a player you don't want to tangle with.
Nobody, not even Brad May will ever say he was perfect.
On the management side the deal shows the purposely gruff Burke also has a heart. Sure he wants some toughness and a locker room presence for his new team and he gets that in May, but he also does May a solid.
May is a Toronto-area native and this represents a homecoming for him. With a little luck and by staying in the good graces of his new coach, Ron Wilson, he may well get the 37 more games he needs to get to 1000, a career milestone that means a lot, especially when he looks back to when he was the subject of a whisper campaign in Buffalo just after his being traded from there that hinted a bad shoulder would have him out of the game in short order.
The Ducks aren't just kind-hearted here either. They already have their share of toughness and physical players. What they do get, even if the pick isn't realized, is some much needed cap space, especially when Teemu Selanne comes off the injury list.
For May though the best part of the deal is that he finally gets to play at home, which maybe when you take it all in, is a bigger deal than anyone thought.
