Well tonight was the night that everyone had their eyes on the Leafs/Devils game to see how Brian Burke’s big shakeup of the roster would begin to play out. And if you were to judge on one night only you’d have to score it 10 out of 10 though maybe that is a bad thing for the Leafs because now the fans will truly believe the corner has been turned and this is the start of many big wins. Could it be? Well the Leafs could well improve to a point but this won’t suddenly make them a top team in the NHL over night, there is still work to do and tonight they came up against a very sub par Devils teams. But I shouldn’t be all harsh, the Leafs did all they could and got service from all three new players straight away to shut out the Devils 3-0.

New boy Dion Phaneuf, the one everyone was looking at played a strong game. He had hits, he had shots and he even dropped the gloves in a decent scrap. Playing slightly under his shadow, which is rare when a Stanley Cup winning goalie comes to Toronto was JS Giguere but he was perhaps the best player of all on the ice turning away 29 shots to pick up his first shutout as a Leaf … the last man to pick up a shutout for the Leafs on his debut was Eddie Belfour. And last but not least was Ferdrick Sjostrom who grabbed an assist on the Leafs first goal and featured all night long on their penalty killing unit.

So there you have it, the deal after one game is a success story and everyone is content. How it’ll look in ten games time is anyone’s guess but while I don’t think it’ll make them a brilliant team just yet, it looks like it might be a step in the right direction. If anything Phaneuf looks like he’ll be fun to watch.

I am not Brian Burke’s biggest fan, but you have to admire him for not sitting on a bad thing and admire him for being very aggressive in trying to tackle the problem that is the modern day Toronto Maple Leafs. Burke has threatened changes from the get-go but as time went on the threats to send veterans to the minors and make trades appeared to be looking like idle threats until Sunday when Burke pulled the pin on a grenade and lobbed it into the Leafs dressing room blowing it to pieces.

By the time the dust settled a staggering 30% of the teams line-up had gone and three good players plus a prospect had come back in. Tonight they will take to the line-up for the first time and everyone will anxiously tune in to see what happens.

I don’t expect a miracle, I certainly don’t expect the Leafs to soar up the standings but something had to change and overall, while losing Ian White isn’t easy (he’s having a better year than Phaneuf), the Leafs have improved to a degree. I say degree because they are now left desperately short in the forward position but can now look at young players and see what forward positions they need to address in the off season. Actually, Burke said he isn’t done trading some some of those positions could yet be finished by trading out some defensemen, a position the Leafs can trim down on.

If only Liverpool, my beloved Liverpool Football Club, could address their own problems and lack of talent un-worty of wearing the Red shirt in a similar way to the Leafs. To many times this season I have watched them fall well short of standards and wished Benitez had the guts to ditch 30% of the line-up. Sure we haven’t the money to buy but we could certainly sell and buy in replacements, perhaps even give some younger players a run out who actually want to be there. But then, that’s a rant for another day.

It’s been a long old hockey season for those that like their trades … Until today. I was sitting watching TV this morning when someone pointed out to me the names of some Leafs players on the news ticker and that it looked like there had been a trade. I turned on the net and was indeed informed of the blockbuster deal that had taken place between Toronto and Calgary and later Toronto and Anaheim.

The trades:

Toronto acquire defensemen Dion Phaneuf and Keith Aulie along with forward Fredrik Sjostrom from the Calgary Flames in return for forwards Jason Blake, Niklas Hagman, Jamal Mayers and defenseman Ian White.

Toronto acquire goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere from Anaheim Ducks in return for goalie Vesa Toskala and forward Jason Blake.

Thoughts:

Well the Toronto media have proclaimed their city the winner of this deal before a shot is fired in anger by any of these players at their new teams simply because Phaneuf is the biggest name in the deal. They have a point to a degree, the Leafs gave up some players on big salaries who were not producing as much as they might have liked and with the team sitting at the bottom end of the standings and losing on a nightly basis, it makes sense to make changes going forward. Losing a bunch of forwards frees up space for the Leafs to give young players a shot to prove their worth for the rest of the season and getting back a young star like Phaneuf never hurts.

Read More»

The Toronto Maple Leafs started the season in an awful way, they then bounced back so much so that they were just a point out of a playoff spot at one point, but the Christmas period and right into the New Year has not been kind, they have reverted back to their losing ways and slipped back down the standings to 14th place in the East.

The dip in form is taking its toll on the players but also the coach as Ron Wilson, never one to be too kind with the media – he always seems like he talks to them because ownership tells him he has to – cracked up when asked about the ‘hairdryer’ treatment he gave to sniper Phil Kessel. Wilson got angry that the media were allowed at practices but went on to say that Kessel had been playing poor.

I don’t know about you – everyone is different when it comes to things like this – but I’m not sure it’s ever a wise move to sound off on a poor playing player in public. It’s that “Don’t air your dirty linen in public” saying that springs to mind.

But then you can understand Wilson’s frustration. Kessel who came to Toronto with much hype has one goal in ten games and is slumping badly, along with the rest of his teams. I just thing it would be better for the team as a whole if he criticised them as a group publicly and left the singling out stuff to the dressing room.

Jonas Gustavsson arrived in Toronto as the great Swedish hope. The fans were on the verge of giving up on Toskala (and it only took a few games before they officially did give up) and were ready to throw all their weight and pressure behind the young rookie. It seemed like a lot for one man to take and while many neutral observers felt the kid, while talented, might stuffer in the Toronto spotlight but nobody expected it to be heart problems that blew up his early season good form. The Monster as he is known has made an excellent start to his NHL career but before that career had even began he pulled out of training camp in order to have minor heart surgery to fix an irregular heartbeat and then last night disaster struck after the first period when Gustavsson left for the hospital with the heart problem flaring up again.

Then today it was revealed the goalie will have to undergo another procedure to correct the irregular heart beat just like the previous one putting him out of the line-up for an unknown period of time. It’s a terrible scenario for the kid but one that will concern the Leafs and their fans. Not just for his healthy, but whether this might be an ongoing career problem that will need many hospital visits throughout seasons. It is a hole the Leafs didn’t need to be tossed into given they are still trying to climb out of another that has them in the bottom places of the Eastern Conference. Couple that with the fact that Toskala, the unofficial starter on the team, is also out injured and the struggling Leafs will have to go with two AHL goalies for the foreseeable future. Expect the trade talks to pick up…

That is a headline you wont have seen very often this season but the Leafs did indeed win a game within the regulation sixty minutes and it was enough to lift them off the foot of the table for now. It also filled their fans and the city with hope that maybe a corner was being turned, but the reality is that until they string a few wins in a row together nobody will get too excited. The Leafs have this Saturday night off for the first time this season which will be a welcome break for the players and also the rest of us hockey fans that wouldn’t mind seeing someone else in the HNIC telecast for a change..

It was almost like they wanted to achieve the goal of moving back into their comfort zone — last place — against the Carolina Hurricanes — the team in last place going into tonight’s match-up. The Leafs blew a 3-0 lead in the first period to see a 4-4 game into the final minutes of play. But an Ian White goal with 30-seconds to go seemed to save their bacon only for the Leafs, in only a way the 2009/10 Leafs can, conceded a goal with 2.7 seconds on the clock to take it to overtime. Not content with actually winning a game in regulation the Leafs decided to give their opponent at least a point. Well as it turned out it was the Leafs that took just one point, again, when Carolina won the shootout. The result moves the Leafs back into last place in the 30 team NHL standings and attention now turns to the management.

Before the game GM Brian Burke threw out threats for the 812th time that players would be demoted or traded if they didn’t step up. Well after tonight’s shambles in blowing the 3-0 lead against the former worst team in the NHL, it’ll be interesting to see if Burke follows through on the threats finally.

When I turned the game on to see them 3-0 up I went onto Twitter and wrote something to the effect of the Leafs would win the Stanley Cup if the only team they had to play was Carolina, but as it turns out I was to quick with such a comment and it seems under such circumstances of a two-team league with Carolina, the Leafs would indeed still come up short.