John Ferguson Jr. was hired by the Toronto Maple Leafs on August 29th, 2003.
It’s been four long seasons since he took over the reigns of the fabled franchise. In that time, the team has changed significantly.
Before we make Ferguson the latest Leaf scapegoat, let’s look at some of the adjustments he has made to the team.
When Ferguson took over, the Leafs lineup looked something like this:
Roberts – Sundin – Mogilny
Nolan – Antropov – Ponikarovsky
Tucker – Renberg – Reichel
Domi – Green – Corson
Kaberle – McCabe
Svehla – Berg
Belak – Marchment
Belfour – Kidd
Thirteen of those players are still on the squad, and it’s safe to say that Ferguson kept the best of what he had to work with:
Mats Sundin, Darcy Tucker, Nik Antropov, Alexei Ponikarovsky, Alex Steen, Matt Stajan, Kyle Wellwood, Wade Belak, Bryan McCabe, Tomas Kaberle, Ian White, Carlo Colaiacovo, and Nicklas Kronwall.
Critics will claim that Ferguson hasn't taken advantage of opportunities, and that he's hesitant to make changes. However, the team has changed significantly over the past four years. To say he hasn’t tried to improve the lineup would be false.
Many players have come and gone during Ferguson’s tenure:
Joe Nieuwendyk, Ken Klee, Petr Tenkrat, Clarke Wilm, Craig Johnson, Drake Berehowsky, Brian Leetch, Ron Francis, Calle Johansson, Jeff O'Neill, Jason Allison, Alexander Khavanov, Eric Lindros, Jean-Sebastien Aubin, Mariusz Czerkawski, Brad Brown, Luke Richardson, Aleksander Suglobov, Mike Peca, Erik Westrum, Travis Green, Yanic Perreault, and most recently Simon Gamache.
Granted, most of Ferguson’s experiments have been failures, but not everyone brought in by the rookie GM has flopped. Some of his acquisitions are still on the current roster:
Chad Kilger – claimed off waivers, March 2004
Andy Wozniewski – signed May 2004
John Pohl – acquired from St. Louis Aug 2005
Andrew Raycroft – acquired from Boston June 2006 for Tuukka Rask
Pavel Kubina – signed July 2006
Hal Gill – signed July 2006
Bates Battaglia – signed July 2006
Boyd Devereaux – signed Oct 2006
Vesa Toskala and Mark Bell – acquired from San Jose June 2007 for first-round pick in 2007, second-round pick in 2007, fourth-round pick in 2007
Jason Blake – signed July 2007
Dominic Moore – claimed off waivers, January 2008
Ferguson is also responsible for the drafting of some blue-chip prospects, Justin Pogge, Jiri Tlusty, Robbie Earl, and Anton Stralman to name a few. What is most alarming, on the other hand, is that Ferguson was brought in to change the Maple Leaf method of trading youth for aging veterans. While today’s roster is certainly MUCH younger than the roster Ferguson inherited, he gave away a plethora of draft picks to make it happen:
2004: 1st
2005: 1st (Rask), 2nd, 4th
2006: 5th
2007: 1st, 2nd
2008: 2nd (added extra 5th)
2009: 4th
comments (4) write a comment »
write a new comment
11 months ago
I disagree, MLSE will just have to bite the bullet and bring in a president who has FULL control of hockey operations and MINIMAL involvement from the board. You don't have to get rid of the Teacher's Pension Plan, you just need to keep their operations on the business side of the organization and keep them away from hockey operations.
from 11 months ago
That was my point. Ferguson is not the problem, it's the definitions of the position. If you bring in a guy like Scotty Bowman, but don't give him the freedom he needs to run the team, he won't be any more or less successful than JFJ.
11 months ago
in a perfect world you can...but with the makeup of the MLSE dollar for dollar spend, that line is too blurred. The TPP wants a healthy consistent return on investment. They also like Peddie for his business acumen. Not his hockey brains.
In order to make this a working franchise you need to change a lot of things starting from scouting and development and you really need to get rid of a lot of players that still have some relative value.
You need to bring in a Hockey first GM like Scoty and reduce the power of Peddie, which is what everybody wants, except the TPP and Peddie because this would cost a lot of money and time to do with no guaranteed return on Investment.
No the only way to change this team's prospect is for the fans and the corporations supporting the team to stay away and boycott for a couple of years...MLSE will see significant red on their books and the TPP might either sell at a huge profit, or they may get behind a change that will bring them even higher profits by understanding that by putting a quality team on the ice will bring in the "playoff revenue" which is akin to a yearly bonus check writ large.
from 11 months ago
Ideally in a cap situation the TPP shouldn't care HOW the general manager spends the money. They are aware that he is going to spend to the limit of the cap and give him the freedom to divvy up the dollars as he sees appropriate.
The fact that JFJ has to get approval from the board before making any significant roster moves is a joke. Who is really running the team?
The TPP and Tanenbaum could technically still remain on the board and own the team while still building a successful franchise *IF* they were to keep their nose out of the GM's business and trust his decisions.
write a new comment