For the sake of all that you hold dear, stop buying Maple Leafs tickets!
It’s the only way Leafs brass will get the message. Ponder this: why should people pay ridiculous amounts of money for a woefully sub par product? The only way to send a message is to hit them where it hurts—the wallets.
With only seven wins in 18 games, the Leafs are dropping faster than the American dollar. Yet, people continue to fill the Air Canada Centre to capacity. This year loyal fans have repeated the time-honored tradition of welcoming their beloved Maple Leafs, in anticipation of a successful season.
But like every year previous years the euphoria fades two months into the season, by which time the playoffs have already become an unrealistic goal. Scapegoats are made of inept defensemen and clumsy goaltenders, but for some reason fans refuse to abandon their team—or their season tickets. It is a process the continues into the summer, typified by endless rounds of golf and the introduction of the latest geriatric free-agents to don the blue and white; all overpriced and underachieving.
Since a absolute boycott by Leaf Nation is about as likely as Bryan McCabe winning the Norris Trophy, the only alternative left is to shake up the administration. This team will not deviate from this foolish course until a some ground shaking changes are made.
The person responsible for this mess cannot be expected or trusted to clean it up. John Ferguson Junior, the Maple Leafs’ general manager insisted that he had built a winning team by signing Pavel Kubina, Mike Peca and Hal Gill for a combined $ 9 million. So, what was the return on this investment?
A grand total of 17 goals and 56 points.
A cursory observation shows that 17 goals for $9 million is not exactly getting your bang for your buck. It’s possible that John Ferguson Junior never learned about cost efficiency in his previous roles as a player agent, and an amateur scout. Perhaps there is some method to his madness. It’s possible, if not likely, that players that score two goals in 18 games really are worth $5 million per year, despite being thirty-four years old and having a small track record of high-performance.
To make matters worse. Over the summer, Ferguson attempted to solve the team’s goaltending crisis by trading for Vesa Toskala. The goaltender was promptly awarded with an $8 million dollar contract without having played a single game for Toronto. Results thus far have been far from encouraging, as the Leafs currently posses the worst Goals-Against rating in the league, having allowed 65 goals.
On the bright the signing of imposing Kazakh winger Nik Antropov has given Mats Sundin a legitimate winger to play alongside with. His creative play and relentless drive are a definite asset to a team with a lot of liabilities. Yet his inability to stay off the injured list draws comparisons to former Toronto forward Dave Andreychuk.
The question still looms: does Ferguson have sufficient hockey acumen to build a solid supporting caste around blue-chip up-and-comers like Antropov and Wellwood? The jury is still out on that question.
