Be it defending the indefensible (Todd Bertuzzi) or simply arguing for what he truly believes is right (rebuilding the team) Toronto Maple Leafs General Manager Brian Burke never tiptoes around the issues.
Neither do we.
On Monday Burke defended every aspect of the plan that produced the current/winless Maple Leafs (the only winless team in the National Hockey League ).
In statements to the media he said he was not pushing the panic button regards his goaltending and that he intends to see what his netminders can do when healthy.
He added that tough-guy defencemen Mike Komisarek, Francois Beauchemin and Garnet Exelby -- all acquired during the off season -- aren't playing up to expectations, but that he doesn't expect that to remain the case and if he had to do those deals over again he would.
He argued that his plan to improve the offence by bringing in a top-flight goal scorer Phil Kessel will be justified once the former Boston Bruin is healthy enough to play, and acknowledged that the other forwards need to "step it up."
He said the objective to improve overall team toughness is working and that players aren't being pushed around any longer.
He said he knows fans aren't happy with the losing and that he isn't happy with the losing but he noted: "We're not ripping up our blueprint."No business plan is ripped up even after 90 days and our season isn't even 30 days old yet.
Fair enough. Those are respectable arguments and we agree with the majority of them, but we also say this:
What's on the ice right now, what's being presented as a product to a ticket-buying public and a North American wide television audience is a mess. It's Burke's mess. He made it, he is solely responsible for it and he's the man who has to fix it.
It's a statement as true as any the GM delivered Monday.
Look no further than the the standings to be certain that even in this still young season Burke's Leafs remain the worst team in the league. Spin it any way you want, but it is an undeniable fact.
Burke knows what he sees and that it's bad. He also knows that no amount of tap dancing or in-your-face bravado can change that.
Is he lying when he says the team can get better? Of course not; the truth is when (and there's an if in here as well) coach Ron Wilson gets the players settled down, does a better job of implementing a system, creates some workable pairings on defence and some harder working and reasonably responsible lines up front, it will happen.
Is he wrong when he says he saw signs of the team coming around in the one-sided loss to the New York Rangers in the Air Canada Centre, the most recent defeat prior to this long stretch of inaction and the upcoming five-game road trip? No. There were signs in that game that some of the things Wilson is stressing are beginning to take hold regarding good positional play in the defensive end and exiting the zone smartly were in evidence. Not taking dumb penalties is something still to be corrected, but that effort was better than several of the ones that came before.
Is it true that the Leafs are more truculent? In a word, yes, but we would argue that my no means makes them more difficult to play against.
What cannot be argued is that Burke has no goaltending of consequence. He had none to start the season and though getting Jonas Gustavsson was possibly a strong and ahead-of-the-pack move for the future, it can't erase the fact that Vesa Toskala was not the answer last season and clearly is not the answer now or presumably even for the near future.
That's a problem; and that falls on Burke.
It should also fall on Burke to recognize that truculence is not a synonym for skill and that if you're going to add toughness to allow your skilled players to play better, you better have the skilled players that will benefit from the added option. The Leafs didn't have those players -or at least enough of them-before Burke got to Toronto. They don't have them now.
If you want to stretch fact to the edge of opinion, I would argue that Burke is also wrong in assessing the Kessel deal with Boston. His argument is that he couldn't get a player of that age and skill level for less than the three draft picks (two firsts and a second) he surrendered to the Bruins.
I admire and respect a man who stands by a belief, but that's not the same as doing whatever is necessary to get what's necessary to survive and prosper. I don't steal, but I can't say I never would, not if there's a loaf of bread available and my family was starving. A person does what he or she has to do. Burke knows that, every man does.
And no matter how he chooses to defend the Kessel trade, he overpaid. He paid a price for Kessel with the idea that he wouldn't be paying with the possibility of a first overall selection in the 2010 Entry Draft. It seemed both logical and defensible at the time, but it wasn't exactly a given. Burke bet that he made enough moves in the free-agent market to assure he won't put the franchise in that position. The standings could change, but for now at least it appears he could lose that bet.
His argument that things could change could happen, but if it doesn't it will be because the roster he assembled prior to the trade wasn't good enough to pull the team out of lottery land and if that happens, well that too falls on him.
And while Burke, or any other GM, hockey analyst or even a lowly sportswriter might argue that there is still plenty of time left to fix the problems and that it is far too early to think about surrendering what could be the No.1 pick overall, Burke knows that in today's NHL a seven-game winless streak can indeed be fatal whether it happens in the first month of the season or the last.
Teams that get behind early tend to stay behind simply because it's not just the top eight and one or two others who are vying for a playoff spot. Because of the points that can be earned in the extra sessions it's now the top 13, 14, and sometimes 15 teams who are in the race right to the end of the season. If you have to make up any kind of substantial deficit, well statistics show that without all-world goaltending it is somewhere between supremely difficult and darn near impossible when there are that many teams still in the race.
There was a time you could fix that with a series of trades and eating some cash, but that's not much of an option anymore. The longer a GM thinks he's in the race the longer he tends to hold onto his players (See Florida and Jay Bouwmeester last season as exhibit A in this case). The longer he holds on, the fewer fixes available at a time where it really might make a difference.
To make the playoffs, a team has to be in contention virtually from opening night.
Burke's team hasn't been able to do that so far and that too falls on him.
So where does it go from here?
That's up to Burke.
He says no one throws out the plan in less than 30 days.
Fair enough, but there are two other old saws that hold true in both business and in life and they go like this:
"You reap what you sow."
"He who hesitates is lost."
Burke would be wise to remember both.