Maple Leaf Darkumentary

Since my colleague wrote a post on his favorite team, the Vancouver Canucks, benefiting from a Parise deal, as any spirited hockey fan would do, I felt the need to over react in kind. Aaron wrote about the need for a first place team to acquire a superstar. Certainly, and again I defer to his creative writing prowess, this is hogwash!



Rather than appealing to the fantasy portion of peoples cerebral cortex, something that Aaron insists exists, allow me to make a case for Parise coming to the leafs thats anchored in logic. On second thought, when was the last time the Maple Leafs fans and management were logical. Very well then, allow me to start with an emotional appeal.

Let me tell you what it is like being a Maple Leaf fan. To use a metaphor it is like standing in the eye of a heavy storm. From where I stand, everything looks calm. I don't understand what everyone is talking about year after year: "Lindros is not even a shadow of his former self (2005),""Rask for Raycroft are you insane!?(2006)""Komisarek is way to slow and takes dumb penalties, he is Mccabe minus the offense (2009)," "Kessel for two firsts, hahaahah, he's so one dimensional (2010)."Need I go on.

I denied all these things. From where I stood then and continue to stand now, I have faith in my team. Be it Phaneuf, Kessel, Kulemin, Grabovski, Schenn, and from prospect going nowhere fast to his metamorphosis into Optimus Reim (best current nickname by the way) James Reimer, and thats just to name a few, this team is for once young and talented. With Kadri coming up the pike, their top prospect, the future is looking bright. But there is something missing. A young, established, unselfish superstar.

Zack Parise is young, established, and unselfish. More importantly, he is American. Tantalizingly for all clubs looking for a fast rebuild, he is rumoured to be not fond of New Jersey. Hmmm, maybe he would feel more at home working for the man who constructed the American 2010 Olympics team where Parise won a silver medal. I'm sure young Parise would love to be considered the best player on an all-American line of Parise-Bozak-Kessel.

Now the pitch. You do not have to trade for Parise. He will be an RFA next year. Meaning that the leafs, who are lean for once in terms of salary committed to next year, can simply throw a gob of money at him. We have laughed at this model before but I think it makes sense based on the Leafs current landscape. Yes, as a penalty the leafs would be relinquishing, yet again, more first-round picks, but does this matter as much as we think it does in a capped system? Players are available to be UFA's at 26 years old now. And just now we are seeing that teams who have finished near the bottom of the league standings - consecutively - are not able to pay for all their star-player draft picks. So really the model every team is forced to use is identifying 4-5 players and calling them the "core"of the team. Since the core costs a pretty penny the rest of the players filing out your roster compose of cheap first-contract players (that become awfully tough to afford to keep should they develop quickly or beyond expectation), young second-contract players that never achieved star acclaim in their first contract, or affordable veterans. Assuming that Burke has been working on a plan the last two years he likely considers Kessel and Phaneuf two members of this so-called core and thinks that high draft picks Schenn (projected to be a defensive, hard-hitting rock) and Kadri (a gritty gifted center who is compared in many magazines to a Mike Richards mold) as two more. So thats four future 5-6 million dollar players, leaving room for one more core player.

Curt
Skate