[cferneyh]

Well I do try my best to avoid drinking the MLSE kool-aid. There are a few of us Leafs' fans out there that aren't completely delusional, but sadly we are in the minority.

I'm curious - since you seem to have all the answers, what would GM Grimes do? And I sure hope your reply isn't: "Well, I'd trade Antropov for Luongo and Raycroft for Crosby....."

Sounds good to me!

Seriously though I don't claim to have all the answers because there aren't any easy ones. Being consistently successful starts with drafting well and developing your own talent, and for too many years the Leafs traded away picks and prospects for players on the down-slope of their careers. That worked well enough to get them into the playoffs on a regular basis, but never made them into serious Cup contenders, and it has finally come back to bite them in the ass since the salary cap put a dent in their ability to overpay for free agents.

If it were up to me, I would have started an overhaul of this roster by trying to trade Sundin and McCabe, among others, at the deadline last year for picks/prospects/young players. Now whether JFJ even had the autonomy from the higher-ups to make such moves is something we'll never know, and therein may lie the real problem. Nonetheless, with the moves he made instead, the roster we have now doesn't offer much hope for the future, or much opportunity for serious change, as too many mediocre players are locked into long term contracts.

So what should JFJ do this summer (I'm assuming the fact that he hasn't been fired yet means that he's keeping his job)? Obviously, addressing the goaltending situation is the number one concern, but I don't see any easy answers on the horizon there. They also desperately need a first line forward, and while it looks like there will be a few of them on the market this year, there's going to be a lot of teams in the bidding. Finding a way to get rid of the ridiculous McCabe and Kubina contracts would help, but I doubt anyone else in the league would be foolish enough to take one of them off his hands. I wish JFJ the best of luck, but I really think he has missed his chance for serious rebuilding, and that Leaf Nation is in store for continued mediocrity for the foreseeable future.

Well that was disappointing. I expected an interesting and well thought out post on a number of moves the Leafs could/should make and you came back with a Steve Simmons column (i.e. everything sucks! But I offer no solutions, because it is way easier to criticize than offer original thought). The McCabe deal was bad? Well duh!

My biggest beef with JFJ was that when it was clear to everyone not named Andrew Raycroft that Andrew Rayroft was not up for the challenge, he didn't do anything to shore up the goaltending, which is what cost them a playoff spot. I refuse to believe there isn't somebody trapped in the AHL who wouldn't be better than Raycroft, but to do something with Raycroft would have been admitting a mistake, and clearly JFJ doesn't want to do that.

Incidentally I'm in Toronto today on bid-nez and I heard Sundin on the Fan this AM say that he thinks Paul Maurice is up there with Pat Burns in terms of the best coaches he's ever played for, and - sadly - he played the injury card as to why the Leafs didn't make the playoffs. That hurt.....but given a captain can't throw his goaltender under the bus......(mind you, he did say that they scored plenty of goals, they just need to "play better defensively").