Leafs weather storms better minus Burke’s blustery days
Brian Burke has funny ways of reminding Toronto he was once hockey czar here.
Take his comments in a radio interview Monday about the struggles of Calgary Flames centre Sam Bennett, who is off to a nightmarishly bad start this season with one point in his first 16 games. Burke wanted to assure the world Bennett will eventually play better, but also that he’s much better off in warm and welcoming Calgary than if he was undergoing similar scoring woes in nasty old Toronto.
“If he were in Toronto, they would have traded him 70 times, shot him six times, condemned his parents four times,” roared Burke.
The Flames executive then doubled down, revealing once more his deep antipathy for the Toronto media and the unfair manner in which he believes he was treated during his time as president and general manager of the Leafs.
“The problem in Toronto is, there’s 100 people in the dressing room after practice, and when the team loses 80 of them are picking up the biggest rock they can find,” he said. “That’s the problem (in Toronto). There’s actually a significant chunk of the media that wants you to fail. We don’t have that in Calgary.”
It may have been mostly Burkian bombast, but his comments were way out of touch with the reality here in Toronto ever since the Mike Babcock/Lou Lamoriello combination took over. It might have been a rock-throwin’ time when Burke was running the show, but it definitely isn’t now.
For starters, the team is better and more promising, and because of that both Lamoriello and Babcock have achieved a greater degree of popularity than Burke was able to despite his very public persona and charitable ways.
Second, Toronto is now the place where there is never any controversy, and the Leafs have become the organization that doesn’t react to anything. The last major controversy?
Probably when Nazem Kadri was suspended by the team in April, 2016, before either Babcock or Lamoriello arrived. For a hockey town that used to be awash in controversy on a weekly basis, that’s like a lifetime ago. Tim Leiweke used to make headlines, so they replaced him with somebody nobody knows. Joffrey Lupul caused a minor storm with an ill-advised tweet earlier this season, but the team just shrugged off his complaints and the story went away in a city where hockey stories never went away before.
Mitch Marner, a hotshot rookie last year, struggled earlier this season, yet there weren’t 70 calls to trade him, zero actually, and none for him to be shot. His parents weren’t discussed at all. Similarly, William Nylander hasn’t been as good yet as he was last year, but aside from discussions of why he might be less effective, there’s certainly been no widespread call to ship him out of town.
My guess is if Bennett were a Leaf, he’d probably be asked regularly about his lack of production and there would be columns written about him and chunks of broadcast time devoted to whether he could use a stint in the minors, but in this town, media and fans have learned patience tends to pay off with young players.
Generally, things just roll along these days with the Leafs, and with Lamoriello in charge you know there’s never any chance something rash will be done. Rather than 80 per cent of the Toronto media hoping for the team to get back to last overall as soon as possible, as Burke believes was the case when he ran the team, most these days seem favourably impressed with the way Brendan Shanahan’s hockey office has built and developed this team, and for sure most find the team much more entertaining to watch than has been in the case in more than a decade. They may not support the team the way Burke says media in Calgary support the Flames — it’s not their job to — but it would be hard to make the case there is an active local media campaign cheering for the Leafs to fail.
The absence of Auston Matthews in recent days has been just another example of how what used to be a massive story in these parts never seems to grow into one anymore. The fact the Leafs haven’t lost since Matthews went down with an upper-body ailment (the guess here is it’s his back, possibly related to an injury in Switzerland two years ago) obviously helps, but if you were around in the days when Wendel Clark’s health was a daily matter of conjecture, debate and controversy, you know this is nothing like that.
Matthews is the team’s best player. But there is more depth here than has been the case in a very, very long time. That was demonstrated clearly with two gritty wins over the Bruins on the weekend. Next man up is how this now works.
There’s a belief here that Babcock is such a good coach that this team will be competitive with or without Matthews, and that bad times, like a lousy western swing recently, don’t last that long because there’s a more businesslike, professional style to hockey operations in Toronto than has been the case since at least the early part of this century. Or maybe ever.
The Leafs won’t say what’s wrong with Matthews, and because the NHL lets teams get away with such nonsense, that’s what the Leafs do. Once an organization that leaked profusely and from more than one source, the Leafs have become a team that’s about unity, secrecy and playing their cards closely to the vest. You get the feeling they wouldn’t release their schedule if the league didn’t do it first.
Burke felt during his time in Toronto it was his job to aggressively defend and protect his players in the media at all times. These days, players don’t seem to need defending, partly because there’s enhanced stability in the organization and players simply fall in line with the program rather than set their own agendas. There’s little or no chance something like Salutegate would happen under this regime.
It’s all rather dull by comparison to previous Leaf eras, and certainly dull in terms of flashy news stories compared to the wildly entertaining Burke years.
But few Leaf fans would prefer the way it used to be to the way it is now. Damien Cox is the co-host of Prime Time Sports on Sportsnet 590 The FAN. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for The Star. Follow him @DamoSpin. His column appears Tuesday and Saturday.