Under the gun

Everybody knows there is enormous pressure on the Toronto Maple Leafs to make the playoffs this season after six years on the sideline.

And nobody will feel that pressure more than the team's high profile president and general manager Brian Burke or their coach Ron Wilson. It's a fact of life; when you accept a position with one of the most celebrated franchises (for all the wrong reasons since their last Stanley Cup victory was in 1967) then you also accept the pressure that comes with the job.

The good news is, both men have enjoyed considerable success in their careers. The bad news is none of it has come in Toronto.

Can they find success this season in what promises to be an ultra-competitive Eastern Conference? One thing is for certain, if they don't, it won't be from a lack of planning. At the rookie tournament held in Oshawa this past weekend, I happened to poke my head into the Maple Leafs executive suite and was blown away by the who's who of the hockey world that now work for the Leafs.

There's Burke, who has held general manager positions with Hartford, Vancouver and Anaheim before joining the Maple Leafs and was the GM of Team USA's silver medal-winning team at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. Burke won the Cup as GM of the Ducks and also served as vice-president and director of hockey operations with the NHL's head office. It's no wonder the Leafs broke the bank to bring him on board.

Wilson was a journeyman defenceman in the NHL, but has found his niche behind the bench. Everywhere but in Toronto that is. He guided the Capitals to the Stanley Cup final in 1998, losing to the Detroit Red Wings; was the first head coach of the Anaheim Ducks and had a fairly successful run as coach of the San Jose Sharks, a team that was always in the hunt, but never quite got it done. Wilson, who was born in Canada but is now a duo citizen of Canada and the United States, coached Team USA to a gold medal win in the World Cup of Hockey in 1996 and to a silver medal at the 2010 Olympics.

Burke's right-hand man is Dave Nonis, the Leafs' senior vice-president of hockey operations and the former GM of the Vancouver Canucks. Dave Poulin, former captain of the Philadelphia Flyers and coach of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, is Toronto's vice-president of hockey operations. Claude Loiselle played 13 years in the NHL, served as assistant GM of the Tampa Bay Lightning and spent seven years working for the NHL's head office.

Rick Dudley is a recent addition to the Leafs staff. After it was announced he would not be retained as general manager of the Winnipeg Jets when they transferred their operations from Atlanta, the Maple Leafs scooped him up, naming the veteran NHLer as the team's director of player personnel. Dudley is widely regarded as one of the hardest working men in hockey. After playing eight years in the NHL and four in the World Hockey Association, Dudley has held a variety of jobs in the NHL including coach of the Buffalo Sabres and Florida Panthers and GM of the Ottawa Senators, Florida and Atlanta.

Furthermore, the Leafs have Francois Allaire as the goaltending consultant. Allaire mentored Patrick Roy and Jean-Sebastien Giguere with Montreal and Anaheim respectively. Steve Kasper is a former NHL player and coach of the Boston Bruins and is one of the Leafs pro scouts, as is Tom Watt who coached in the NHL with Winnipeg, Vancouver and Toronto.

Suffice it to say that is a lot of brain power in one NHL team's head office. The old saying, 'Too many cooks spoil the broth,' comes to mind, but I suspect there are not any members of this particular management team with ulterior motives and they will work well as a team. Burke will take the advice of his staff, but at the end of the day the decisions are his.

That is why it is imperative the Maple Leafs make the playoffs this year. Had Burke come to Toronto and announced he would build the team slowly through the draft, his plan would have been greeted with applause by the long-suffering Leafs Nation who have watched manager after manager try unsuccessfully for the quick fix.

That is exactly what Burke did, too, when he traded away two first-round picks for Phil Kessel and signed a handful of high profile free agents. The time to win is now. It doesn't seem so long ago that the Leafs used to enter this time of year with high hopes of winning the Stanley Cup. Now the hopes are realistically medium that they can make the playoffs.

The fact of the matter is Burke has made a nice recovery by acquiring some good young talent -- players who were high draft picks -- from other organizations. It's almost as though he realized there is no quick fix where the Maple Leafs are concerned so he brought in the likes of Keith Aulie, Cody Franson, Joe Colborne and Jake Gardiner to go with the club's own picks which include Nazem Kadri, Tyler Biggs, Brad Ross, Stuart Percy and Matt Frattin. The cupboards are no longer bare where prospects are concerned.

Still, if the Maple Leafs flop this season, Burke will be judged harshly and you have to wonder if this super team he has assembled at the management level will survive. Heaven knows it must be costing the Maple Leafs a bomb to have all this experience in the front office.

The Hockey News has picked the Maple Leafs to finish 10th in the East; a reasonable conclusion when you consider THN has Washington, Pittsburgh, Boston, Philadelphia, Buffalo, Tampa Bay, NY Rangers and Montreal making the playoffs with Carolina finishing ahead of the Leafs in ninth.

You wonder if that happens, will Burke stay the course ... or will he even have that opportunity?

Veteran hockey columnist Mike Brophy writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday on Sportsnet.ca and appears regularly on Hockeycentral.