The Kessel Offer

Faithful Remnant! Can you feel the cool breeze of lady hockey around the corner? Did you flip on TSN the other day to see our beloved Blue and White smuf-babies taking to the ice for their masterful beat down of the Baby Pens and the barn-burner against the Baby Bruins (Cubs?) We did, and it warmed the cockles of our hearts. Did you catch that Stalberg-Bozak-Hanson line? Sure they are 23 year old's playing against 18 year old's but...well..actually, that kinda makes it less impressive. Regardless! I bet they are feeling pretty confident going into camp. Oh! And Kadri too. Sweet hands. And don't forget the Monster. Looks like a serious and focused kid. Kinda the anti-Pogge. We're pumped.

Since our last installment there was a minor Leafs trade, namely the 2011 2nd and 3rd rounder for 2010's 2nd rounder back. Faithful readers of the blog may have wondered why there was no installment of From the Oracle after this trade. We apologize if it left you feeling lost, frightened and alone. We also regret that you didn't have the opportunity to turn to our professional insight so that you, the emotional Leafs fan, did not have to suffer in the barrenness of your own opinions on the matter. Who can you turn to for stoic, rational insight into all things Leafs if TOV is not on the ball!? Well, we decided we didn't want to make the trip all the way to the secret cave of the Oracle to ask her mystical opinion on the Leafs latest trade because, cmon son, obviously the Leafs got their 2nd round pick back so that they can have a weapon of math instruction for their ongoing talks with the cap-strapped Bruins and their feisty, 36-goal scoring, Mr. Bags-Under-Eyes. And what precisely would that math instruction be? Well, St Brian says, "trade us Kessel for a decent return or we'll use our picks to sign Gollum to an offer sheet that you can't match."

(For those of you out of the loop at this point: Team A wants to sign their Restricted Free Agent (RFA) to a contract but the kid refuses. Team B--provided they have their 1st, 2nd and 3rd round pick for the next year--can swoop in and offer the kid a contract and, depending on the size of the contract, Team A will be compensated with a number of the picks. The Leafs traded to get their own 2nd rounder back so that they can be in this position.)

So Ahab, the great white prize is within your sights. Will St Brian be a fisher-of-men? Or will this be a big ol fail-whale. Let's break it on down.

Full Steam Ahead!

Sign him! Dude scored 36 goals in 70 some games. He can easily pot 40. Him on Micky Grabs wing (and one day Kadri's) would be magical. And speedy. And we've got enough goons now to allow him to work his lil patchy-beard magic. Plus he's got a pretty wicked Northern American accent. Have you ever heard him say "Haackey." I can almost hear him saying "great jarb on dat pass der, Meekhail. We scored a gash-darn graet goal."

At this point, the only deterrent is the compensation. Around the draft the deal was rumored to involve Kaberle and some sort of pick (a 1st) going from one team to another...except neither team seemed to know which one was going to give it.

Needless to say,

...

hmm?

(Yeah, I've always found that a weird saying too). Needless to say, the deal didn't go through and Kessel is still contractless and Kaberle is still shining up his baby-face for the new season.

But what of the potential of a 1st rounder and 3rd rounder or a 1st, 2nd and 3rd going to the Bruins? Can we stomach 3 high-potential players for 1 sure thing? A 20-something 40g man doesn't come along often. We..*shudder*...lost our last shot at one in the Nolan trade and he's been potting goals with other Leaf sendoffs (Alex "Not worth it for Pronger" Steen and Carlo "Splodybones" Colaiacovo.) Surely we can sacrifice one draft year for a bona fide star in Kessel. Besides, this draft coming up is apparently going to be pretty brutal after the first few picks. Like...brutal.

So the option is: Phil Kessel or 3 players who are probably going to be projects or like good 2nd line guys. Or Phil Kessel.

So, should we land this fish? What say ye, Herman?

"All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in [Phil Kessel]. He piled upon the whale’s white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it."

Agreed. Pull the harpoon trigger, Burkie!


or

Save the Whales, man

To be honest, the only reason I can see us not wanting to do this is if we are convinced that Phil Kessel doesn't want to be in Toronto and will bolt at the end of a contract or demand a trade later on. I personally love Boston. Great place to live, especially as a 20-something. Regardless, for some reason Phil has decided that he wants to get out. Is that the kind of player we want in the room?

I suppose another reason is if we really think the Leafs are in a lottery pick spot again this season. But with Ottawa's regress and Montreal's journey to the Lollipop Guild (adorable lil forwards; we actually have footage of a dust-up at their practice the other day)...well, we honestly don't see the Leafs in that 13th-15th spot this year.

To be honest, I think Kessel is the perfect player for this team and for this coach and GM and if we can get him without giving up Kaberle, than we throw the picks overboard and not look back.

What do you think, faithful remnant?

From the Oracle: The Pogge Trade

Sorry, it's taking time for my magic dinner plate to load the "promising Leafs traded" file

So soon for another installment of From the Oracle? Well, we find ourselves back in that frenzied position. You know that position—a trade has just gone down and the chemistry and makeup of the team has been altered and you are in that scared and worried place: “did we just screw ourselves over? Did we win that trade? Will I miss player x? My google search of player y has yielded no fruit. I’m lost and frightened and I seek council.” Well luckily we here at TOV recognize that you are feeling lost and adrift and that is why we take the arduous trek to visit our oracle whenever a trade happens. We vow to bring you her secret and mystical utterances.

Surely by now if you are faithful followers of our fantastic franchise you will know that the Leafs have all but traded Pogge to Anaheim for a conditional draft pick based on his performance for the Ducks (*edit: it's official now.) Recently we here at TOV profiled our beleaguered puckstopper, where we weighed the pros and cons of keeping our lil cocky Poggers. Ultimately we were in favor on keeping him and letting him test his mettle by competing for a backup position on the Baby Leafs (and we also mused about a dream scenario of loaning him out to a team, much like they do it in Europe and much like how I loan out all my crappy young players when I’m playing FIFA 09. Off to Nottingham Forrest for you! Haha!) We were actually looking forward to seeing if he had what it takes mentally to work his way up the ladder.

However, St Brian had other ideas. He actually went through with his “this kid deserves a chance to play and I’m going to give him a chance to play by not playing for us” threat. Methinks Burke actually means what he says when he says things to the media. Weird. We are so used to JFJ lawyer speak: “I am not currently at liberty to discuss that particular issue regarding that particular player or players like him, but all I can say to our fans with their insatiable hunger for any scrap of knowledge from the front office is that I am looking at all options, non-options, potential options, options both known to me and unknown to me and any options that fall into the category of unknown unknown options, in order to bring this club to the level of competitiveness that we would like to see our team be at” zzzzzzzzzzz….*murf* hmm? Oh yeah. Oracle.

So Burkie is doing what he says. How odd. When we posed to the Oracle our question of why the Leafs would trade away an asset such as a gold medal, Russian shutting-out, Rask-beater goalie of the future, she gave us an answer and ultimately a point of view that we had not considered before. After several poured libations, and countless incantations in an ancient tongue lost to us now she eventually emerged from her secret cave. Her oracle is as follows “a murmurer overboard murmurs alone. A murmurer below deck scuttles the fleet,” which is another way of saying “I think I’ve had too many poured libations.”

Incomprehensible as it is, our experts, lawyers and general holy men took to work unpacking her pronouncement. What we have gathered is as follows:

There are many good reasons to have kept Pogge: he’s young. He’s a goalie. Goalies develop slower than humans. He has that unfortunate moniker of potential—wanted by 19 year olds, dreaded by 25 year olds. He’s got a gold medal and a pretty wicked backstory of humble beginnings. He would push Reimer, or Reimer would push him, or something would be pushed in the Marlies. Whatever. It’s the Marlies. Everyone is trying to get out. Plus it is never really a bad idea to have options at all positions, especially goal. We liked these options. These options made sense to us. We slept at night knowing that Pogge knew what job he had in front of him and it was time for him to go out an win our hearts and minds. Done and done, lets go make fun of Eklund (e5).

Well, St Brian said “kid won’t get time to play here. I will trade him for a pick kthxbai.” What do we say to this?

Our take

Three little words that have been the culture of the Maple Leafs for almost a decade now: country club entitlement. Fresh faced youngsters fresh off the boat, or fresh off the combine skate into town, get a few goals or some nice toe saves and the Toronto Media gets all love-shy and bashful and competes for who can write the best “I Wanna drink Justin Pogge’s Bath Water” article. All of a sudden the kid with Maple Leafs' shining in his eyes soon stands on his balcony, o’erlooking the city like a second Nebuchadnezzar and pronounces “is this not the Great Crease Legacy I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?” (For all you biblically literate readers out there, perhaps we should have a, “Is Justin Pogge going to turn into a Donkey” blogpost. We digress.) Before you know it the player is penciled in on the starting team and they start asking the equipment manager if the lawn chair they brought to practice is going to damage the blue ice.

So Burke is sending a message. You may be the goalie of the future. You may be a great talent that is waiting to develop. We may have been really happy to have you in our line-up in three years once you begin to breakthrough whatever it is you need to breakthrough to become the premier puckstopper that you have always envisioned yourself to be. However you are living and acting as if you have done it, and once you live like you have done something, you will never do it. Basically, Pogge started being Pete from Madmen.

So St. Brian’s message is that we are willing to trade a probable goalie-of-the-future in order to stamp out the culture of entitlement. As long as Pogge thought he was a great goalie without having been a great goalie, he would never be a great goalie, and there was a real strong potential that he would drag down the rest of the team with him. Scuttle the fleet.

It’s been a long time since we’ve had a GM who valued heart before talent, so we’re not really used to this. We’re concerned that a promising player has been shipped out of town, but in reality it may have saved the whole show, both for us and for Pogge. Kid just got slapped around. Kid just got schooled. He just learned the lesson that any sign of any taint or blemish on your work habits can infect the entire team and will not be accounted for on a team that is pushing to win. Pogge now has two options: 1. Go to Anaheim, work your tail off, live the Rocky III storyline (“Yo Adrienne, we did it!”) and become a goalie. Or 2. Go to Anaheim, never shake your delusions of grandeur and become Trevor Kidd, who was only ever good at growing horrible facial hair.

So we stamp out the culture club and all the bad karma chameleons, get a low pick and give a kid a chance at becoming an honest player and shaking the messiah-in-waiting label.

But here is our final point for you, our faithful brethren. If Pogge does go to Anaheim and Rocky III’s it there, once he is a free agent looking for a place to take his new found A-game, to whom do you think he will have a feeling of loyalty? Pogge probably hates Burke now, or is indifferent, or lost in a syrupy mire of self-pity and delusions of grandeur, but he would be truly shortsighted if down the line he doesn’t realize that this is the opportunity he needed to achieve the highest honor he, or any NHLer could have: being known as an honest and classy player. If anything, Burke is a good General to his men (and we love him for it!) Men marshaled under a good General usually welcome opportunities to be marshaled under them again.

Keep the faith.

Prorogue Pogge's potential departure from our perennial puck paradise...post haste!

Thousand-yard stare? Or reading the plane ticket




Greetings faithful remnant.

Or, if you've lived in Toronto over the last few days, happy monsoon season! There were some here at TOV who thought that the storms of the past few days were the final wrathful apocalyptic acts of the hockey gods, upset by our munchkin commish's reign of error. Indeed, we dusted off our "the end is near" signs and started handing out maps to our secret mountain compound. There was debate whether we should dry store or freeze store our emergency seed supply, but by then the rain stopped, the great oracle read the animal innards and told us that it was not wrathful gods but just a crappy summer and we went back down to DEFCON 4, "Code: Mogilny."

But that DEFCON level may be a-rising with the recent news, illustrated here in The Star (yucky, I know.) They claim that the Leafs are shopping Pogge! Now, normally we here would read the Star's article with our coffee and say to our Toronto bourgeois selves, "so this is what news is like north of Eglington...and not even one rhetorical trope or literary reference in sight!" and then we would laugh it off and go to MLHS or PPP for our real Leaf's news of the day.


Normally. Except for one lil scary bit in the middle of that article. You know, that part where Brian Burke says, "we are actively shopping Pogge so he can go play somewhere else." (or: "I have promised Justin I will try to find him a place where he will get a better shot," for those who are link adverse.) And we know Signor Malcontentay means it too, because that's the same line he gave during the whole putting-Kronwall-on-waivers-so-he'd-go-play-somewhere-else deal. Now, is Burke being a nice guy, or is this a better way of saying "goodbye, unwanted part" without actually saying that they stink.

But therein lies the debate: does Justin Pogge suck? Seven months ago he was still the crown prince of the organization, sent from above to shepherd his people to the land of milk and honey and grapes the size of habs forwards (adorable lil forwards!) Remember all those Howard Berger articles where he called us stupid to be rooting for a player playing for a team that we cheer for and love? But now he's earned the Brian Burke "I owe it to the player" kiss of death?

So faithful remnant, we have 2 options:


Doooooo it!

Pull that trigger Burke. Dude was 1-4-1, 0.844% and 4.36. I get better stats in ball hockey [aside: need a ball hockey goalie in the Toronto area, hit me up]. I remember the poor leaf homer who picked Pogge for his fantasy team in my league. He had some dark days, let me tell you. [Aside: Fantasy rule #1. Keep emotion/fandom out of it].

Secondly, maybe there are some GM's out there who remember the 2006 World Junior shut out of ze russians. Let's play that up and see if we can get some kind of return on him, or package him with Kaberle for some sort of obscene monster deal.

Also, speaking of the 2006 championship: Steve Downie. TML. Getterdone.

Thirdly, we've got Jonas "I can peer into your soul"Gustavsson, and James "No google images for me" Reimer. That spells future tandem, children! We're set. We don't need no Tukka Rask (aaaaaaaaaAAAH.....Freak Out!) and we don't need no Justin Pogge (or thought contraul). So lets turn that G into an F (Downie plzkthxbai).


Seriously?....Seriously? No, seriously?

Take a gander at who won the Vezina this year. Was it Luongo in Vancouver? Or was it Nabokov in San Jose? Nope. Tim freak'n Thomas. One night, the Bruins GM needed a goalie, went to a local Boston pub, found some guy and put him in net. I swear, the Vezina trophy this year is the same plotline as The Rookie. Except we suspect that its more like the plotline to Angels in the Outfield, because divine intervention by Christopher Lloyd is the only way Thomas made half those saves this year. And don't look at us to explain it, we just deal in Leaf's divinity.

But back to the argument: Tim Thomas won the Vezina. He spent years playing around Europe, honing his craft, learning about loss and hardwork and dedication and really really wanting something (maybe something some young hotshot who say's he's "naturally ripped" in a cribs episode could learn). Can we give goalies out on loan? Send him to Sweden or something. Get some culture and puckstopability and come back all zen and Gustavsson-like--the apparently ultimate butterfly "Monster" goalie. (hmm...butterfly monster eh?)

Bottom line is that goalies take time to develop, and it ain't no science. It's not really an art either. Some sort of weird voodoo magic? Finnish food? Who knows. But the argument is, is that Pogge's got the tools, he just doesn't have the structure. So maybe he should stay in the place that just hired the best goalie coach in the world who loves athletic giant goalies like Pogge. Is there a real harm to have him duke it out in the Marlies with Reimer. Let's see if this kid really wants this. Earlier in the season Burke said himself that Pogge hasn't earned his way on to the team, but has he really earned his way off to another? Sure he may be a bit cocky and channeling the ghost of Ray Emery a bit, and sure I'm personally way more excited about cool and calm goalies like Gusty and Reimer, and sure Ron Wilson threw him under the bus but is it really time to take this mutt to the rural vet? Can't we gauge (pardon the pun) to see if he is a hungry hungry hippo, or just a regular hippo?

So let's hear it, faithful remnant of leafs nation: Pogge out? Or Justin.

Keep the faith

p.s. vote in the poll!

p.p.s. and thanks so much for reading. I appreciate all the support and comments. It's nice to be liked by fans of the team you love.