Toronto Maple Leafs: Has Burke Reincarnated The 93/94 Canucks?

In the 1993/94 season the Vancouver Canucks, entered the playoffs as the seventh seed team in the Western Conference and made a run to the seventh game of the Stanley Cup Finals.

At first thought, there would seem no similarity to the Vancouver Canucks of yesteryear and the Toronto Maple Leafs of 2010/2011.  Look carefully, and there are some interesting similarities.

Brian Burke had just left the Vancouver Canucks at the end of the 1993 season.  In his time as Director of Hockey Operations he managed to be part of one of the best trades ever for Vancouver.  The 1990/91 season 5 player deal sent Cliff Ronning, Sergio Momesso and Geoff Courtnall from St. Louis to Vancouver for Garth Butcher and Dan Quinn. This trade changed the chemistry of the Canucks.

In the 2009/10 season, Brian Burke orchestrated two huge trades that would/will forever change the chemistry of the Toronto Maple Leafs in acquiring Dion Phaneuf, Fredrik Sjoistrom, JS Giguere and Keith Aulie.

The Vancouver Canucks had a fast skating high scoring right winger, his name Pavel Bure. Bure had 34G and 26A in his first season as a Canuck at age 21.
The Maple Leafs have a fast skating high scoring right winger, his name Phil Kessel. Kessel had 30G and 25A in his first season as a Maple Leaf at age 22.

The Canucks had 4 players score more than 16 goals that season (Bure RW 60, Linden C 32, Courtnall LW 26 and Ronning C 25).
The Maple Leafs have 4 players that may provide all the offence this season (Kessel RW 40?, Kadri C 25?, Versteeg LW 25?, Grabovski C 20?).

The Canucks defense was large, hard hitting and sprinkled with a small amount of finesse in Jyrki Lumme a 13G, 42A setup defenseman. 
Maple Leafs are the same except they have Kaberle with a 2010/11 7G and 42A as their setup defenceman.

Centres: Vancouver's Trevor Linden was the largest at 6'4" 210 lbs while Cliff Ronning was the smallest at 5'8" and 170 lbs.   Toronto's largest Christian Hanson 6'4" 228 lbs and the smallest Grabovski at 5'11" 178 lbs.  Although Linden is far superior than Hanson, the depth at centre for the Canucks was hardly any better than the Maple Leafs is now.  Both teams largely depend on 2 centres,

Goal Tending: Vancouver's Kirk Maclean was a hard working technical goaltender with a 2.99 Goals Against Average and .891 save percentage (1993).  Toronto's Giguere is a hard working butterfly goalie with a 2.85 GAA and .901 save percentage (2010).

Age: 18 players on the Vancouver team were 25 years or younger.  17 players on Toronto are 25 years 

Whether Toronto can pull off what Vancouver did in 1994 remains to be seen, but certainly the pieces seem to be similar.