Rigamarole - A Foot In The Crease - Episode 3.21

www.afootinthecrease.com

Now that John Ferguson Jr. has finally been removed as general manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the search is officially on for a long term replacement while Cliff Fletcher guides the team over the final portion of the 2007-2008 regular season. As Fletcher said and Richard Peddie mouthed, Fletcher is the “custodian of the keys” for the Maple Leafs during this important time of transition. While it has been made clear that Fletcher will not become the long term general manager, his role, nevertheless, will be a critical one as the Maple Leafs must significantly reposition their roster before the trade deadline to allow for the rebuilding process to begin in the summertime.

Rebuilding, oh what a dirty word in this city of Toronto. Get bad for a year or two in order to get good for a long time. A scary premise, yes, but looking back at the last three years, the Maple Leafs were already bad, just not bad enough to get good. If a team is going to miss the playoffs, it might as well miss the playoffs by finishing in last place and yielding a good draft choice instead of missing by one point and getting a mid first round pick, which as the Maple Leafs have continually proven, is anything but a can’t miss cornerstone player.

As Philadelphia showed last year, rebuilding does not have to gone on for long before noticeable improvement is seen so long as shrewd moves are made before the trade deadline and at the NHL Entry draft in June. Listen clearly Leaf fans, unless MLSE finally embraces that dirty word “rebuilding”, the Maple Leafs will long be on the path of mediocrity, fighting for the last playoff spot, sometimes making it but surely not to do any damage; other times missing but as mentioned before, not by enough to be significantly rewarded for your failure. Rebuilding has to be done. Why not start now and stop putting it off any longer. But hey, all that was just rigamarole.