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GDT #14 FEB 10 7:30 - Les Schtroumpfs Costaud

Yeah, I remembered but eh.

Honestly I way prefer Engvall in the lineup and I’m kinda digging Boyd and even Petan is okay. Got such great depth.
 
Petan looks like a completely different player this year too.

And the habs vaunted D could not contain Hyman all night. Matthews is such a fucking beast, trying to remind myself to enjoy every moment he is a Leaf. Fun game. Habs not very scary.
 
Just hilarious to see such a dramatic improvement in a team once the guy leaves.

Don't remember teams run by Burke automatically turning things around right after he left office. He wasn't good at his job by any means but some of the nonsense that came out about Babs was downright shocking and repulsive.
 
worm said:
this very board thought babcock and burke were 2 of the best ever
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we needed someone with a pedigree who could stand up to an ownership that was either not committed to winning or were not on the same page as how to win.

With Burke's hire it became apparent that ownership actually did want to win. Unfortunately, Burke's method of winning turned out to be the wrong way of building a winning team.

With Babcock, again, we needed someone to bring legitimacy to the new program (on the ice) and the "painful" path forward. Him choosing Toronto accomplished that. His hardnosed way of going about things also helped break the losing culture while not getting us meaningless wins and costing key lottery picks. Unfortunately, his time was up when he failed to make the next adjustment that we needed from him. That is this was a young team full of fire power, it's ok to sit Patrick Marleau in favour of AM34. He just couldn't get over that and got fired.

I'd hire both in a second had I known back then what I know now. I'd fire Babs when we did, and I'd fire Burke soon after the "Pittsburgh model" presser as it was obvious that we were going to be mediocre for the duration of his stay here.
 
You mean people thought a GM coming off of a cup win was good and then watched his teams finish mostly out of the playoffs for the next 13 years and don't have the same opinion? Crazy.
 
Does anyone else feel that whatever Babcock turned into was the sum total of what the hockey community built him up to be both in terms of celebrity and eventually the highest paid coach in hockey?

As far as I've read, he never hit anyone, he wasn't a racist, never ran anyone out of hockey. He was just an asshole of a person who developed a reputation as a winning coach. In sport, where winning is the ultimate goal - if an asshole coach, or asshole GM or asshole player can push you past the goalpost, it's usually accepted as a cost of winning.

Look I'm glad the Leafs moved past him, but I think that was always the plan. But I don't think he should be shamed out of hockey because he got called out for being a dick. He's also being lumped in with Bill Peters and Don Cherry - which I think is unfair.
 
CTheBigPicture said:
we needed someone with a pedigree who could stand up to an ownership that was either not committed to winning or were not on the same page as how to win.

With Burke's hire it became apparent that ownership actually did want to win. Unfortunately, Burke's method of winning turned out to be the wrong way of building a winning team.

With Babcock, again, we needed someone to bring legitimacy to the new program (on the ice) and the "painful" path forward. Him choosing Toronto accomplished that. His hardnosed way of going about things also helped break the losing culture while not getting us meaningless wins and costing key lottery picks. Unfortunately, his time was up when he failed to make the next adjustment that we needed from him. That is this was a young team full of fire power, it's ok to sit Patrick Marleau in favour of AM34. He just couldn't get over that and got fired.

I'd hire both in a second had I known back then what I know now. I'd fire Babs when we did, and I'd fire Burke soon after the "Pittsburgh model" presser as it was obvious that we were going to be mediocre for the duration of his stay here.
Click to expand...


I dunno—I never really bought into the “ownership didn’t want to win” storyline when it came to the Leafs.

There were some issues in the 90’s when Stavro was the majority owner, since he was fairly broke for an NHL owner (he notoriously wouldn’t pay Gretzky when he was a UFA).

But after he sold, ownership (whether it was the Teachers Pension Fund, Tanenbaum and/or Bell/Rogers), always ponied up for big UFA’s and one of the top payrolls in the league.

Managerial incompetence post-Quinn was the main problem, not a lack of resources.
 
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