The Leafs won’t finish 29th. I mean, just look at the rosters for the Avs and Isles, etc. Toronto was 24th last year and that was with Schenn as a rookie and no Beauchemin and no Komisarek and Toskala essentially playing like an AHL sieve. The goaltending can’t possibly be as bad as it was last year, and if it is after 15 games, they’ll make a change. Joey MacDonald would post a better save percentage than the Leafs as a group managed last season.

They weren’t going to get Hall or Fowler, not with Burke and Wilson in charge. They already blew their chance at a top two or three pick, and that was this past season.

I’m going to go on the record right now that the best prediction tool we have in hockey at this moment is evidently not very good. If the Leafs couldn’t finish second-last in 2009, there’s no way they’ll get there this season.

Puck Prosepectus’ projections, using their VUKOTA rankings (the single best prediction tool we have in hockey at this moment…is it perfect, no, but it is far and away the best projection system out there, far more accurate than simple non quantitative opinion) have the Leafs finishing 29th this season.

I can’t get on board with this assessment. The VUKOTA system purports to be hockey’s answer to PECOTA and it simply isn’t because there’s far too much randomness in, and far too big an impact of other players on the ice, to project production in the way you can in baseball where every situation can be measured and every variable can be controlled for.

In addition, the formula for VUKOTA has never been released, so we don’t know what it is, and the system is so new it hasn’t been used to successfully predict much of anything so far. We’re basically being told ’ trust us, this works’ without any evidence. To me, that’s not enough to have a ton of faith in it.

Puck Prosepectus’ projections, using their VUKOTA rankings (the single best prediction tool we have in hockey at this moment…is it perfect, no, but it is far and away the best projection system out there, far more accurate than simple non quantitative opinion) have the Leafs finishing 29th this season.

That makes me laugh. Did you see the rosters they trotted out for the past two seasons? All they could manage was the 7th overall pick. Now they’ve added Beauchemin, Komisarek, Kessel for 3/4 of a season, the handful of rookies that played are all a year older, they got rid of goalies that had a .867 and .844 sv% respectively, and you think that they’ll fall to 29th?

Things like this are why old-school fans don’t like new statistics. When they tell you something ridiculous it’s supposed to make you look at your methodology again and adjust it.

Demote Finger, trade Kaberle. Problem solved.

All of the top teams in hockey now are extremely top heavy. The big guns are getting all of the cash. Heck, the Penguins have $30-million committed to five players next season, so $36-million on 10 seems terrific.

Interviewing Wilson is like getting a root canal, but you have to give the guy credit in terms of coaching. How on earth that team scored as many goals as it did, I haven’t the foggiest.

Yeah, see that I can agree with. The real trick is going to be getting from the bubble spot up into the contender spot given the depth they’ve got, but Burke’s got a few years to get there and a ton of cash to do so. Toronto needs the cap to start going up again.

The thing is, Burke and Wilson will not tank. They won’t finish at the bottom and go the Penguins/Capitals route. So how else can they get an elite talent? You can’t draft a better player than Kessel unless you finish in the bottom five, and the Leafs just plain aren’t going to do that barring some horrific injury luck.

Colorado’s lineup has been decimated and they’re being coached by Joe Sacco. They won’t be good. Neither will half the teams in the East. Good coaching and decent defensive depth, which the Leafs have, will get you to 10th or 11th in the conference easy.

I agree with you that the Leafs should have been worse than they were an acquired more elite talent, but the fact is, that’s not an option with the management group they’ve got now.

Phil23, it’s not good enough to just collect a lot of youth either. You need to collect talented youth that will progress on the same schedule towards an open window of compeititveness. The Leafs couldn’t tank because of the constraints the salary cap and no-trade/no-movement clauses put on them (in the year or so after the Ferguson firing). That meant they weren’t collecting lottery picks during that time period. The solution – the only solution available to Burke and the Leafs, rather than a choice they made from among many options – is to try and acquire youthful talent in alternative (i.e. non-draft) ways. Hence, Bozak, Gustavsson, Monster.

I wrote an article about this in Maple Street Press’ Maple Leafs Annual that you might find interesting.

The same as Grabs-they’re like tiny surfers riding on top of a wave of beatings.

About as much as Selanne and McDonald did in Anaheim. Burke likes his skill guys, too. He just fills the bottom of the roster with Coke machines.

Well, the only players with more points since the lockout than Savard are Ovechkin, Crosby, Thornton, Datsyuk and Heatley. So I suppose that constitutes something above “standard form first line centre”. Therefore, Kessel should notice that he doesn’t get the miracle passes anymore and will have less space because his linemates will be worse. Also, opponents can concentrate on his line – remember, Boston often ran three offensive lines last year and at some stages of the season the Krejci line was actually more dangerous than the Savard one.

Still, Kessel has enough speed, skill and shot to be dangerous even alone and I’d be shocked if certain doomsayers that expect a collapse without Savvy turn out to be right. It remains to be seen if he can develop enough to compensate for lesser linemates and his injury, but he’ll score some goals.

I’m not saying the Leafs will make the playoffs. I’m saying they won’t be a lottery team.

But Kessel is the same age as all of the Leaf’s top prospects aside from Schenn and Kadri. He fits in exactly with the rebuilding process. My only issue is that two first rounders is one more than I’d be willing to pay.

Heck, if you don’t want to tank then trading for Kessel is probably the best chance you have when it comes to acquiring elite talent, certainly higher percentage than the crapshoot of drafting later. He does have elite level talent should his head clear at some point, but he also has enough issues that he was actually available.

Anyway, you shouldn’t give up hope that this could be a true elite acquisition (remember, he was touted as the first overall pick for a long time). It’s just a real high risk, high reward one, as he could just as well end up scoring 20+ a season while causing more goals against, pouting and being overpaid.

The correct blueprint to build for a Cup win is there in black and white.

I disagree wholeheartedly. To be honest, I find the idea of the success in tanking to be greatly exaggerated. Going to a cliché here, but correlation does not equal causation. Just because Pittsburgh won the Stanley Cup does not mean tanking is the only surefire method to build a contender. Building a contender requires a whole litany of factors, few of which includes proper player development and prudent free agent signings. Tanking causes a lot of salary cap implications down the line and last I checked, the salary cap isn’t going to increase markedly in the next few years.

What I will allow is that obtaining multiple first rounds is as important of a strategy than trying to bottom out for the chance of a top pick. Draft picks aren’t guaranteed by any stretch of the imagination, so probability dictates the more chances a team has to pick players, better the result of finding a good/great/elite player.

As I’ve said before, Brian Burke is one of the highest paid executives in all of professional sports. If he can’t build a team without the aid of top-5 picks in the five years of his tenure, why in the world are the Leafs paying him that much? If the decision was to tank every season until the Leafs draft every so-called elite player, it’s quite superfluous to hire an expensive executive to wait on a horrendous team for several years so he can accumulate high draft picks.

So what does a person do as a thinking Leafs fan now? The hope of aquiring true elite talent has been squashed but to go back cheering for them game in and game out seems an excercise in futility when we can all see where this is headed. At best a 1st round loss. With no real future hope of better.

Can you really tout the VUKOTA system and then call yourself a thinking fan ;)

Just busting your chops. The addition of guys like Gustavsson, Bozak, and Hanson at the cost of no picks allowed Burke to make this deal. He didn’t add a 31 year old. Kessel is 21 years old.

If you only want to cheer for them when they are a contender then stop cheering for them because you’re not a fan.

The correct blueprint to build for a Cup win is there in black and white.

Yes, it’s called the Detroit Red Wings model.

One of the great things about sports is unpredictability: who thought the U.S. would beat the Soviets in 1980? If they had used a "probability generator" or whatever, then they might as well have awarded the gold to the Soviets right there. But they didn’t, because they had to play the game first.

No one’s saying the Leafs aren’t capable of beating any other team in the NHL.

Hell, the Leafs added Curtis Joseph in the summer of 1998 and despite being predicted to miss the playoffs (by a mile) again they made it to the conference finals.

We won’t know how the changes to the blueline, Toskala’s surgery, Gustavsson, the NCAA kids, or Kessel will work out for a while but it’s easy to just look at last year and predict the exact same result I guess.

Heh, they’re just another team in the funhouse to me.

I’m sure Boston’s gonna win this trade in the long run

Who are they using the picks on? Schenn and Kadri or Jeff Ware and Luca Cereda?

But I believe the offer sheet compensation would have gone up if it had included more than a three year term. One advantage of the sign-and-trade is that Kessel is locked up for five years.

(Assuming he plays up to it, of course)

So why did Burke trade for Kessel? Was he just trying to save face for his ridiculousness after the Penner offer sheet? By trading for Kessel instead of using an offer sheet, he basically just traded his 2011 first round pick for a 2010 third rounder. Am I missing something?

There’s always the threat of the Bruins tradings his rights elsewhere and that team matching, even if the Bruins can’t afford it.

So, for example, Kessel signs an offer sheet under which the Bruins will be entitled to first- second- and third-round picks. In the period the Bruins have to match (i.e. still have Kessel’s rights), David Poile calls up Peter Chiarelli and says, ‘Hey I hear Burke’s offering you first- second- and third-round picks for Kessel. We’ll give you that plus an additional third rounder".

Kessel’s rights then go to Nashville, who matches the offer sheet from Toronto and Burke misses out on his guy altogether.

So he signed on to play for Ron Wilson, that notorious creampuff?

So, according to Peter Chiarelli, Kessel wanted out regardless of the contract

It occurs to me that Chiarelli may have a wee motive to go a little revisionist on this one. He traded an unpopular player for no immediate assets; he subtracted the leading goal scorer from a team that is now expected to contend (after a second-round upset exit last year) and added back nothing by way of warm bodies. I’m not saying Chiarelli is for sure misleading the press, I don’t know, I wasn’t privy to the relevant conversations, obviously; what I am saying is that it may be unwise to rely uncritically on his comments.

People are just overestimating what a seventh or eighth overall pick is worth. It’s really not that much, and it only buys you a player who’ll be ready a few years down the line. Toronto’s obviously going for a quicker rebuild than that.