In Kelley's final column, the Hall of Fame writer reflects on Brian Burke's two years in Toronto.
Editor's note: The column below was filed by Kelley at 1:30 a.m. ET on Tuesday morning. On Tuesday evening the news broke that Kelley had lost his lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer. Kelley was a great man and a writer, his words will be missed.
Let's start with getting the introductory quote out of the way simply because it keeps getting in the way.
It was two years ago Monday that general manager Brian Burke introduced himself to hordes of Toronto Maple Leaf fans and almost as many members of the media by stating that the Leafs, as a team, require "proper levels of pugnacity, testosterone, truculence and belligerence. That's how our teams play," he said then.
And that's how they play now. Generally, they hit, they rub you out along the boards, they don't usually back down from a glove in the face and, overall, they are a far cry from the Leafs of recent vintage or at least the years before coach Ron Wilson and, later, Brian Burke arrived.
But here's the real rub: Going into Tuesday, the Leafs have played 22 games this season, their supposed go-forward season and have won eight and lost 11.They've banked another three "wins" in overtime. If you check the financial pages, I'm sure you'll find a few more wins created under a scam by Enron and monitored by the Bank of MLSE as well as a few goals credited to Phil Kessel left over from a bank for players like Washington's Alex Ovechkin via the likes of Bernie Madoff (150 years in federal prison) and Allen Stanford (indicted in a $7-billion Ponzi scheme centered on fraudulent certificates of deposits issued by his offshore bank in the Caribbean). What, you don't have your own bank in Antigua? Check Ovechkin's deposit slip from Sunday night.
By contrast, the Capitals, not off to the greatest start in the history of the NHL, do lead the league in the standings after 25 games played -- tied with several and one behind Chicago (26) for most games played. Going into Tuesday's schedule, they have 17 wins, six losses and two overtime losses.
But I did not come here to dazzle you with the incomprehensible NHL standings; I came to point out that I was around when the then expansion Caps regularly took losses like 14-2, (Dec. 21, 1975 in Buffalo). I believe I was at that game, but it was nearly 35 years ago and if I'm wrong, I'm certain the Caps excellent PR staff will remind me and the rest of the electronic world with a world-wide flashing red tweet.
The Caps know losing. They put together losing streaks of 37 games including one that stretched from Oct. 9, 1974 to Mar. 26, 1975 and earned them the title "hapless". There was a run, 13 losses (1981) in late December and most of January and then 12 losses and home losing streaks of 13 games (once in the spring of 1975) and three winless streaks of seven games (one in the fall of 2007, another in the fall of 1981 and yet another in the Christmas period of 1975-76).
This is not to rag on the early days of the Caps whose turnaround has been majestic or what truly is a rebuild of the Maple Leafs from the ground up, but while the Leafs keep talking about a grander, quicker plan here, there is a similarity at work. True, the Capitals started out with a blank sheet of paper but the Leafs are doing something akin to the same.
The two goaltenders seeing action on a regular basis are Burke's goaltenders of recent acquisition, Jonas Gustavsson, the one he turned up in Sweden as a free agent and the one he recently won a Stanley Cup with while in Anaheim, Jean-Sebastien Giguere.
On defence, it's virtually all of Burke's recent acquisitions with Keith Aulie, a former fourth-round pick of the Calgary Flames who came over before ever playing an NHL game. Francois Beauchemin, who also came from Anaheim; Carl Gunnarsson, a 2007 seventh-round draft pick from Orebro, Sweden, originally drafted by the Leafs; Korbinian Holzer, a Leafs pick in the fourth round of the 2006 draft; holdover Tomas Kaberle, a 1996 draftee; Mike Komisarek, a former first-round pick of the Montreal Canadiens and the seventh pick in 2001 draft whom the Leafs signed as a free agent as well as Brett Lebda, a 28-year-old native of Buffalo Grove, Ill. and a healthy scratch several times this season as he tries to break into the lineup on a regular basis.
Of course the big acquisition, currently injured, is veteran defenceman Dion Phaneuf, who is expected to anchor the power play and the defence, captain the overall squad and steady the kids, especially the highly-regarded Luke Schenn who was the Leafs’ first-round pick and the fifth player taken overall in the 2008 draft.
If that's not a major rebuild, please explain what is.
Burke tends to build his team from the goal and defence out and having what he thinks are the proper pieces in place for netminding and defence he's starting to work now from the front to the back.
People complain about the speed -- or lack of same -- in the process, but there is a top-scoring right winger in Phil Kessel (acquired in a controversial trade with Boston) in place. There are some gritty two-way forwards in Colby Armstrong, Kris Versteeg and Clarke MacArthur (all acquired in trades), some tough guys in Colton Orr and Mike Brown and, to a limited degree that should flesh out over time, some offence up front as the kids get more accustomed to their roles and the new talent works its way through the top two, perhaps three, lines.
There's also a decent teaching coach in-house in Ron Wilson and though media might not like his approach, he has a history of making his players better. He also has what could develop into a productive, if not exciting, young player in 2010 -- first-round draft pick Nazem Kadri.
Will it take time? Of course it will, especially on the offensive side, but the plan -- if you look at it as a four- or five-year plan (something all teams are loathe to openly commit to) -- it can be done. Look at teams like Ottawa (a just-missed kind of club that two years ago or so had its shot), both an early addition and the current edition of the Capitals and even last season's edition of the Chicago Blackhawks as well as a few others. That's the new normal in a salary-capped world. Still, if the Leafs keep hiding their aversion to the cap, build with as few mistakes as possible, build a scouting system and hockey department extraordinaire (like Detroit) and sell the dream to the current players that they need to keep dreaming the dream and working hard to win and it could, over time, work.
There are lots of reasons that a plan like that doesn't work in Toronto, impatience being a primary reason, but it can happen.
It happens almost regularly in Detroit where it could happen again this spring. It happened a year ago in Pittsburgh and it could happen there again this spring. It happened last spring for Chicago and if the Caps right themselves in the post-season it will have a number of GMs rushing for copies of the George McPhee "How I Did It" book which likely would might even include Brian Burke (the NHL being a copycat league and all).
None of this has to be a bad thing.
It will take time, however, a tremendous amount of hard work and a lot of patience. All of which are often in short supply in the Big Smoke, but that doesn't make it impossible, just that much harder.
If Brian Burke has learned anything in his two years there, it's exactly that.
Happy anniversary big guy.
