Recipe for Leaf Success in the Burke Era

(Photo By Dave Sandford/Getty Images)

Building a great franchise is difficult to do. In recent history the two great franchises that come to mind, when I think of continuing success over a sustained period of time,would be Detroit, and New Jersey. What makes them stand out is their continual ability to field teams that are competitive year in and year out—and as we all know they have both won their share of Cups.

The Leafs could, and more than that, should be one of those great franchises. The fans are knowledgeable and devoted, the building sold out every night, and the ancillary revenues from TV and Leaf souvenirs are enormous. But somehow this greatness has more than eluded the Leafs.

The Leafs over the last 40 odd years have managed to avoid doing what was necessary to really build the foundations that would lead to continual success. Of course, there were a few exceptional Leaf teams that gave us a breath of hope: The squads that come to mind are the 77-78  Leafs, the 92-93 and 93-94 Leafs, and then again in 98-99 and 01-02.

The hard part about watching those teams was the sense of impermanence that surrounded them. On each of those teams moments the brief moment of hope  for Leaf fans was counterbalanced by fear—fear that a meddling owner would do something ridiculous, or the coach  would get involved in a vendetta against his star players, or there would be  power struggles at the management level.

And running through all of these scenarios there was the continuous and strange lack of ability of all parties to read the writing on the wall, and understand what it takes to build a winner.

Now the Burke era has begun, and all that is the past, and you know what they say about the past, "Ya gotta let go and move on" all the spiritual books preach it, and as Leaf fans, we have got to be some of the most spiritual fans in all of hockey. If faith could win Stanley Cups, we'd have a lot more than 11.

Here is my personal recipe for what I believe the Leafs need to do to build a truly strong, vital, continually successful franchise.

Scouting

As we all know there is NO CAP on scouting, coaching, etc. So , what do you do when you have the oodles of cash that MLSE has- you build yourself a scouting team that is second to none. You have scouts in every league, every level, and everywhere around the globe.

This is how seventh round picks and free agent signings turn in to players that rip up the league, because someone has spotted their brilliance. Perhaps they are diamonds in the rough and perhaps nobody has bothered to look. However the bottom in line in today's cap market is scouting is more important than ever. Get em young, get'em cheap—and get the one's nobody even knows about.

Drafting

Drafting is obviously one of the major ways teams will be built going forward in the NHL. This concept is  a no brainer, but for some reason the Leafs have trouble with this idea for aeon's. To put it simply, THE LEAFS MUST HOLD ON TO THEIR PICKS IN THE DRAFT. The bad old days of Fletcher and his "Draft Scmaft" are ancient history. From now on , the Leafs should draft in the first round, and second and third, and fourth—regardless of the deals that other GM's dangle in front of them.

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