Toronto Maple Leafs' Fans are in for a Crazy Ride

The Leafs are like a bad sketch comedy show: They use all the same gags, they lack a quality supporting cast, and now that cast is falling to drug addiction problems.

Well, if you change "drug addiction" to "injury bug" that may be a little bit more accurate.

In every other city in the world, the Earth keeps turning, even if their hockey team hits a snag. Up is still up, down is still down, and the mental patients are far from the bank.

But in Toronto? Well, you better hold onto your hat.

For the next few weeks the mental patients have full control of the bank.

Those outrageous contracts are still on the roster, the under-performers seem to mount daily, and management is content with filling their swimming pools with a fresh supply of silver dollars.

Now for the directionally challenged. 

As of now, down is up and up is down—it's just that the effects of this won't be felt until June.

If the Leafs keep up the pace they're at, they'll be left with a top-five pick. See, the farther your team goes up, the higher their draft placement.

Of course, if the Buds decide to start winning and their play goes up, their draft position drops and (in the highly likely event they don't make the playoffs) they're stuck with another mid-round pick, just one of two kinds of picks that the Leafs SHOULDN'T get.

With the mid-level choice, there is a lot of parity. Any pick could be the wrong pick, which could come back and bite you, and in a city like Toronto, you get bitten a lot.

With a top-five pick it's easier—so long as Toronto doesn't pick first overall.

Yes, you heard me right.

Unless Toronto has solidified it's General Manager position with a long-term solution come draft day, picking first overall is a very risky endeavor for these Toronto Maple Leafs.

The first overall pick is a psychological battle in and of itself.

Teams are bombarded with offers to swap draft positions, or trade out of the first round entirely by "enticing" packages of other picks and players.

If Toronto were to get the first overall pick, their top priority should be instituting a permanent GM option immediately.

That way, if they want to deal the pick, they have a guy with a vision for the future of the team, rather than a guy who's making sure the phone is still working fine for the next poor sap to take this job.

It's not that Cliff Fletcher isn't trustworthy (yeah he gave up the Roberto Luongo pick, but everyone makes mistakes), but what happens if the guy you bring in after Fletcher hates the players brought in for that pick and gets forty cents on the dollar?

You just forfeited youth for a game of musical chairs on ice.

Despite the difference between Toronto and the next hockey market, some things are constants: Their number one goalie works to keep them in games, their best player is their best player, and the most over-valued player on their roster plays for about 70 percent of that over-worth.

Mats Sundin and Vesa Toskala are the only players on this team that have that game-changing ability—and despite their best attempts, they can't do it alone.

This is where those "over-valued" players come into the picture.

On every team you've got some players that you pay far too much, and some players who work hard to achieve what some critics think is far too much. 

Unfortunately for Toronto, almost all of their players are over-valued and undeserving at this point. 

All in all, Thursday was just another day in the life of the Toronto Maple Leafs and their fans.

Rampant rumors spread about Mats Sundin's future as he met with GM Cliff Fletcher, a game was played on Leafs TV (which, amazingly, isn't available to everybody...I wonder what the goal of this is? *cough* cash *cough*), Mats does his best to carry the team yet they still lose, the Leafs lose another player to injury (and another to suspension), and Leaf Nation has now adapted the "us against the world" mentality as three goals had something to do with video review.

Oh, and Paul Maurice got really angry.

Yep, nothing out of the ordinary here.