Brian Burke confused a lot of people last night by revealing that young Nazem Kadri was the guy he wanted all along and not superstar in the making John Tavares, leaving the Toronto media scrambling on the Internet to find out just who exactly they would be writing about for this mornings papers when they seemed sure it would be John Tavares. For months we had been lead to believe that the dream was to move up in the draft to pick Tavares and for months leading into the draft, Leafs GM Brian Burke was saying that was exactly his plan, but when it came to the crunch he called Kadri to the stage as the Leafs new hot prospect. Burke of course was trying to make Kardi feel wanted but he would have saved himself from looking like a fool had he just kept quiet with the media back at the draft lottery all them months ago. I could see then that it would be a costly (in terms of players they would have to give up) mistake to try move up for one hot prospect in Tavares and one that was very unlikely to happen.

Nothing against Kadri of course, he has to be a top prospect to go in the top 10 of the NHL entry draft and he could indeed have a hall-of-fame career, and I sure hope he does — he seems a nice kid.

Brian Burke’s night got even more silly following the draft of his new star however. When Kadri took to the stage he was booed hard by the Montreal fans as you might expect given their rivalry with Toronto and booed more when he pulled on the Leafs jersey. It was a shame of course to see Kadri’s moment spoiled a little from this but he did seem to laugh it off, while Burke clearly didn’t.

He played the ‘My Dad is bigger than your Dad’ card, last seen on the Primary/Elementary School playgrounds:

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about that,” Burke said. “I will tell you this: the best hockey fans on the planet are not in Montreal, they’re in Toronto. When we host this event in a couple years and Montreal goes up to pick this will seem like child’s play for the booing they will get in Toronto.”

— Brian Burke 

I can barely wait. No such thing as taking the moral high ground here.

On the subject: Brian Burke, Maple Leafs, Nazem Kadri, NHL, NHL Entry Draft, Toronto Sports | ALL SUBJECTS |

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