[Thanos]

Jordan Eberle allegedly wants out of Edmonton or is slated to be traded. The Oilers youth movement has been going on for eight years now and hasn't produced squat so logic would dictate that they're the last team in the league to copy. And here's hoping that Stamkos' agent talks some sense into him and stops this stupidity of him going to Toronto. He won't win anything there and will end up as the next Mats Sundin, highly regarded by everyone but never got within sniffing distance of even winning a playoff series much less the Cup. That curse Dave Keon put on the Leafs when Harold Ballard fucked him over is still alive and well. Babcock, Shanahan, Stamkos, Burke, Sundin, Phaneuf, Kessel, Fletcher, Gilmour, Clark, Sittler, etc, etc, etc. You could put together one of the greatests team of all time with those kind of guys and they'd win the damn Cup anywhere else. In Toronto though? No way man. That place is permanently fucked.

[bootlegga]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

You won't win with a team of young kids forwards hoping they all work out. Ask Edmonton.

FTFY

The problem with Edmonton isn't anything a few good defencemen wouldn't fix.

The Oilers' brass have been stuck in 80's mode and only seem to remember having four of the best forwards in the league (Gretzky, Kurri, Anderson, Messier), but somehow forgot that they had two top flight goalies (Fuhr, Moog and later Ranford) and a core of solid defencemen (Lowe, Coffey, Fogolin to name a few) on the back end for when someone coughed up the puck.

Last year's trade that sent Devan Dubnyk to Minnesota was proof that the Oiler's biggest problem is lack of defence - Dubnyk had a career year after he went to a team that had a clue about playing defence.

[Lemmy]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

If you're waging the future of your franchise on a lottery and a chance that that pick might be a generational player, you're going to have a really shitty team.

And yet, it worked for Edmonton, Pittsburgh, Quebec/Colorado and Pittsburgh again.

OTI OTI:

You may want to visit the Leafs drafting record post-1984. Richardson, Rask, Boyes, Steen, etc.

You're preaching to the choir. I already stated, above, that the last all-star calibre player the Leafs drafted was Vince Damphousse. Part of the problem has been terrible scouting (and an insistence on drafting Europeans). But most of their problem has been finishing too high up in the standings. And bringing in good players, like Stamkos, will perpetuate this, just like Kessel did. The crappy Leafs, year after year, finish in the bottom tier, but not bottom enough to pick a sure-thing. They keep drafting 8th, 9th (if they hadn't pissed away their 1st rounder in deals like the Kessel fiasco). By that point, in most drafts, you're likely to get an NHLer, but unlikely to get a superstar, a player of your own to build a franchise around. The Leafs did that and had that opportunity one time, but chose to trade that player for Mats Sundin (a trade I view as every bit as bad for the Leafs as the infamous "Courtnall for Kordic" swap) and the rest is history.

Again, the only hope for the Leafs (and I believe this is management's game-plan) is to finish last, DEAD LAST, and draft 1st or 2nd overall for the next 4, 5, 6 years. Sure, not all of those years are going to produce a great player and they may not get a Crosby or Lindros, but they'll have a lot better probability than they've had by drafting 8th every year.

[OnTheIce]

Lemmy Lemmy:

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

If you're waging the future of your franchise on a lottery and a chance that that pick might be a generational player, you're going to have a really shitty team.

And yet, it worked for Edmonton, Pittsburgh, Quebec/Colorado and Pittsburgh again.

OTI OTI:

You may want to visit the Leafs drafting record post-1984. Richardson, Rask, Boyes, Steen, etc.

You're preaching to the choir. I already stated, above, that the last all-star calibre player the Leafs drafted was Vince Damphousse. Part of the problem has been terrible scouting (and an insistence on drafting Europeans). But most of their problem has been finishing too high up in the standings. And bringing in good players, like Stamkos, will perpetuate this, just like Kessel did. The crappy Leafs, year after year, finish in the bottom tier, but not bottom enough to pick a sure-thing. They keep drafting 8th, 9th (if they hadn't pissed away their 1st rounder in deals like the Kessel fiasco). By that point, in most drafts, you're likely to get an NHLer, but unlikely to get a superstar, a player of your own to build a franchise around. The Leafs did that and had that opportunity one time, but chose to trade that player for Mats Sundin (a trade I view as every bit as bad for the Leafs as the infamous "Courtnall for Kordic" swap) and the rest is history.

Again, the only hope for the Leafs (and I believe this is management's game-plan) is to finish last, DEAD LAST, and draft 1st or 2nd overall for the next 4, 5, 6 years. Sure, not all of those years are going to produce a great player and they may not get a Crosby or Lindros, but they'll have a lot better probability than they've had by drafting 8th every year.

No offence, but I'm happy you're not building a team. Let's leave that to the experts.

[Lemmy]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

No offence, but I'm happy you're not building a team. Let's leave that to the experts.

Huh? What I'm suggesting is exactly what Shanahan and Lamoriello say their plan is. So if you're happy I'm not building a team, you must be unhappy with Shanny and Lamoreillo, eh?

[OnTheIce]

Lemmy Lemmy:

Huh? What I'm suggesting is exactly what Shanahan and Lamoriello say their plan is. So if you're happy I'm not building a team, you must be unhappy with Shanny and Lamoreillo, eh?

They've said they plan to place dead last for 5-6 years? News to me.

If you plan to be awful for 5-6 years, you don't bring in the best coach in the league, nor make salary room and free up the captaincy for Stamkos.

[Lemmy]

OnTheIce OnTheIce:

They've said they plan to place dead last for 5-6 years? News to me.

Maybe not is so many words, but definitely they've said that in principle. Things like:

Brendan_Shanahan Brendan_Shanahan:

This plan is not something unique from what the other 29 teams in the NHL are trying to accomplish. It is about drafting, developing and showing patience with players.

Brendan_Shanahan Brendan_Shanahan:

"The challenge in Toronto is not coming up with the plan but sticking to the plan. That is the hard part. Our vision is to draft and develop our own players. I think every decision we make has to be about building a winning organization that can sustain itself year after year after year through the draft."

OTI OTI:

If you plan to be awful for 5-6 years, you don't bring in the best coach in the league, nor make salary room and free up the captaincy for Stamkos.

When has anyone with Leafs said yesterday's deal had anything do with freeing up the captaincy or the salary for Stamkos? That's just you and the FAN590 crowd speculating. As for the coach (I'll let your presumption that Babcock is the best coach in the league slide, I don't think it's true), a coach isn't 5 years used-up after 5 years. Babcock isn't on an egg-timer like a player is. He won't be any less of a coach in 20 years. But your logic is partly why we shouldn't want Stamkos. There's just no need to bring in a winning player when there's no winning to be done. Save the salary and go get Stamkos (if he can still play) in five years when you need that kind of player. For now, the plan (as Shanahan has said frequently) is to draft and develop those players as the core and to avoid the temptation to grab the Stamkos-of-the-moment off the free agent pile. We've all seen the Leafs run that playbook and it's never resulted in anything better than performing just good enough to get a crappy draft position in the next draft.

This is getting cyclical. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on the best course of action for a Leafs rebirth.