Brian Burke's Bold Moves Won't Turn Around the Toronto Maple Leafs

Anybody thinking that Brian Burke has turned around the Toronto Maple Leafs by acquiring Dion Phaneuf and J. S. Giguere, is hoping for too much.

Both have impressive statistics.  Giguere is a Stanley Cup champion and Phaneuf hit a peak in 2008 when he was a first team all star whose play has shrunk noticeably since.

How do I rate the trades?  Make the one with Anaheim, but not with Calgary.

Toronto got the best of the Anaheim deal.  Giguere is a better goalie than Vesa Toskala and Jason Blake is an older player whose best days are behind him.

Anaheim wanted salary cap space and Giguere was an extraneous expense with Jonas Hiller around.  If the Ducks had really tried, they probably could have done much better, but they just wanted to get Giguere’s salary off the accounting books as soon as possible.

But getting Giguere and Phaneuf won’t mean anything until the Leafs start playing as a team.  Defense is a team concept and was supposed to be Toronto’s strength this season, given that there were few scoring stars up front.

But the Leafs have given up more goals than anybody this season.  No other team is close.

Giguere will win the Leafs a few more games, but he won’t make much difference until the whole team starts playing better defensively.

In that context, Phaneuf is just another talented player like Tomas Kaberle.  Their talents mean nothing unless the whole team can execute consistently a well designed defensive plan.

The Leafs stripped themselves further of scoring by sending Stajan and Hagman to Calgary.  Now it will be up to “the kids” from the Marlies to take up the slack.

The Leafs season is lost so it is a good idea to see what the young farm hands can do, but if they can’t improve a bad offense, and play a good defensive game, then the Leafs will be weaker than before.

Still worse, Calgary shrewdly took White, perhaps the Leafs best overall defenceman whose career has been on the rise while Phaneuf’s has declined.  When that is considered, there is a real possibility that the Leafs have been taken to the cleaners in this deal.

In 1968-69, the Chicago Blackhawks, with Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita, and other stars finished last because they couldn’t play defense very well.

In contrast, in 1975, the New York Islanders, only three years from setting records as the worst expansion club ever, became perennial Stanley Cup contenders who went to the semifinals, with only one bonafide star, Denis Potvin, because they could execute Al Arbour’s defensive plan.

Until the Leafs play defense as a team, adding talent like Giguere and Phaneuf means nothing.  That is when the real revolution in the Leafs’ fortunes will take place.

Since the dynasty years of the 1960's, the Leafs have relied on their goaltenders far too much to make up for bad talent and poor overall team play.

You cannot win the Stanley Cup without good goaltending, but J.S. Giguere will not succeed where Mike Palmateer, Felix Potvin, Grant Fuhr, Curtis Joseph, and Ed Belfour have not, without talented players who can play good defense consistently.

At the NHL’s website, the Leafs are described as “underachieving.”  I disagree.

Burke made a lot of brave talk based on his offseason deals that the Leafs would make the playoffs.

He seems to be the only one to believe it.  Most of the public has been booing this team since the first game of the season.

Either Burke was kidding himself and everyone else or he has badly misjudged this team’s level.

When Burke is compared with his basketball cousin, Bryan Colangelo, he comes off poorly.

Both tried to turn around their teams in the offseason.  But the Raptors are probably where they should be, a team that is playing better than .500, which occasionally beats a superior team and occasionally loses to one they should beat.

The Leafs are far from that modest pedestal and don’t have a first-round draft choice this year.  It’s hard to imagine where they’d be without Phil Kessel.

Burke needed to get Dave Keon and Red Kelly, spectacular defensive players who provided enough scoring when necessary, on a team that had few top offensive stars, but played the team game to perfection.

That’s when the Leafs found ways to win, not lose.  That’s why they won four Stanley Cups in the 1960's.

Instead the Leafs now have a “tough” team with little talent, that still has no clue about playing defense well and consistently.