Toronto Maple Leafs: Brian Burke Says Th-Th-Th-Th-That's All Folks!

A lot of Toronto Maple Leaf fans are praising Brian Burke's offseason work, but don't count me among them.

My report card reads like this: Better team than last year's team: Yes. Good enough to make the playoffs: No.

I'm forced to give this early grade because Burke recently stated that he has finished tinkering with the team for the summer. But I, and many fans, expected more to come. Right now, the finished result is anticlimatic.

Don't get me wrong. All the new players that Burke acquired are going to help the team. It's just not enough.

How did I come to my conclusion?

Unless something absolutely disastrous happens, it is unlikely the Leafs will be able to beat out any of the top five Eastern Conference teams: Boston, Tampa Bay, Washington, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

That leaves the bottom three teams, the New York Rangers, Buffalo and Montreal, to beat out.

But the Rangers now have the prized offseason catch, Brad Richards, and most people would rate Buffalo's offseason upgrades as better than the Leafs'.

That leaves only Montreal to beat out, not to mention whatever gains in strength the Leafs' non-playoff contemporaries, Carolina, the New York Islanders, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Florida and New Jersey have made.  When you consider the competition, it doesn't look good for the Leafs.

Most fans were hoping for a few top-line forwards to sign with the Leafs, but this year's thin crop of free agents coupled with the fact that the best of the bunch, Richards, was not interested in signing with Toronto, meant that there was not much Burke could do.

He did sign the next best thing, Tim Connolly, but on a good team, he would probably be the number two center, not the guy who will be setting up Phil Kessel.

That leaves the long shot hope that one of the farm hands, Nazem Kadri (whom much is expected of) or one of the rookies has an unexpected James Reimer-type season.

The Leafs are also hoping that the Clarke MacArthur-Mikhail Grabovski-Nikolai Kulemin line continues to progress. If it doesn't, the Leafs will be even further in a hole.

Burke has a team composed of mostly very good "mid-level" talent. It might be possible to package a group of those players in a trade for one top-level player.

In that context, he may regret letting veteran goalie J.S. Giguere go to Colorado instead of packaging him with a group of players in a deal with a team that needed goaltending help.

One area of surplus is now defense, with many fans and media members speculating that Matt Lashoff and Mike Komisarek will join Jeff Finger as the odd men out.

That's too expensive a package to have wallowing in the minors.

The only question is why Burke won't try to make a deal for some of this surplus during the summer.

Maybe he is waiting for training camp to see who plays themselves out of the picture before deciding to act.

But when considering his conference rivals, what Burke has now is not enough. 

To make matters worse, this may be the last year the Leafs have to make the playoffs for a long time.

Next year, the league will realign with likely-weak Winnipeg trading places with powerful Detroit.

It may be over a decade before the Leafs rejoin the playoffs again.