#timleiweke

A blog about how much it hurts to love the Leafs doesn’t need to exist when both the team’s President and head coach inform the fanbase, with comforting frankness, that pain is coming.

The current regime has done everything imaginable to set my mind at ease. Even last season, in all it’s awfulness, was in essence a victory, because the team planned on tanking and came in dead last, landing franchise center Auston Matthews. I still found things to be frustrated about last year, particularly Joffrey Lupul’s tepid performance in the latter half of the season. But overall I was just fine with watching the opposing team skate rings around our rentals (Grabner, Paranteau, Arcobello, Brennan, Laich, Matthias, Spaling, et al) as we rode the proverbial eighteen wheeler to the basement. 

I’m not complaining about having less to write about these days. It’s obvious anyway that my mind has been elsewhere, chiefly watching and enjoying the team, devouring thousands of words in Leafs coverage per night in between periods. I stream my games so I don’t get to watch the intermission chatter, which has actually strengthened my love for the game. It’s amazing how the opinions you form are in tandem with those talking heads, even when you haven’t heard what they said. This is either because I am a genius, or because the things they say are generally patently obvious. Except for anything Elliotte Friedman says, because Elliotte Friedman is an excellent analyst and broadcaster, the TV personality of Mike Gartner. You don’t notice how good he is until you realize how much faster he is than everyone around him.

Things haven’t been this good in nearly fifteen years. Even before Game 7, the 2013 playoff run smacked of a fluke, what with the team riding an impossibly high shooting percentage and winning games despite being outshot every single night. It is roundly acknowledged that the Leafs would not have made the playoffs if the 2012-2013 season went to 82 games, or even 62.

But this has been a tremendous year, even if the Bruins just knocked the Leafs back to ninth after holding a playoff spot for all of twenty four hours. Not only has the on-ice product been exhilarating, the coverage of the team has been uniformly excellent this season, save for Simmons. @JeffVeillette’s hashtag #LeafsAreActuallyGood is getting more and more retweets every day, and deservedly so. And The Athletic is providing some absolutely fantastic journalism, even if I can’t be bothered to pay for it because I’m broke all the time. Suffice it to say, I would read the exclusive content if someone bought me subscription, but I probably should have said so before Christmas. 

So here’s what I’ll be doing lately instead of complaining: Along with more regular updates, I’ll also be rounding up and posting links to Leaf-related content, though not as a traditional aggregator. While I will be posting recently published articles (80% of them likely being the work of Sean McIndoe or Down Goes Brown, as he’s more famously known, 15% James Mirtle who I hate less now that he’s dialed down the smug, and the other 5% being wildcards), I’ll also be digging up some old stuff such as old articles featuring terrible Leaf predictions, interesting YouTube videos, and podcasts or images relating to the Leafs that I have something to say about. I’ll also occasionally post an article or two that has nothing to do with the team at all. I’ll be doing all of this for a few reasons: 

1. To discipline my writing by shoehorning my usually flowery sentences into the more economical form of the capsule review. 2. To curate content according to my own tastes, so that my Google searches start filtering out writers I dislike.  3. To find a way to keep the blog going without complaining in every post. 4. To be less like a Leafs fans answer to Maddox, who disappeared from the internet just as social media was exploding, and in doing so buried himself beneath the bilge of bellowing bastards that is Twitter, Facebook, and to a much lesser extent, Tumblr. I don’t mean that I’m relevant to social media, but that the number of posts on this blog began to decline just as the team’s fortunes began their ascent, and that this was not coincidental. 5. The non-Leaf stuff will be posted just to prove that I have a life outside the team, even if I may not have a life outside my bedroom. I still love the Leafs just as much as you do. Don’t believe me? Ask the needle that a guy named George dragged through my skin last week for forty-five minutes.

#LeafsLoveHurts In more ways than one.

Anyway, posting links to articles other people have written might help distract from the fact that right now I don’t have much to say other than: I love that the team is playing high event hockey this season and winning in ways that are actually sustainable, though I hate that they have such a hard time holding onto leads and I loath the defence pairing of Polak and Hunwick and don’t understand why Babcock continues to give them minutes when they are clearly struggling. Neither man can even make a simple outlet pass. They need to be shipped to Robidas Island before I complete this sentence. Still here? Fuck off.

So, here’s today’s or this week’s or whatever’s three articles of the day, week, whatever:

1. Let’s start with a great article from, who else, Down Goes Brown on Brian Burke’s trade acumen when he was the GM in Toronto: 

2. This one is only tangentially related to Toronto, in that it’s about Tim Leiweke, which is a bit of an odd choice given that said article was published before Tim came to Toronto, and I’m posting a link to it well after he has left Toronto. But it is such a good fucking read that I have to put it here. It will take you half an hour to forty five minutes, but you won’t regret it. Reading from the perspective of now, you feel almost bad for the guy for not fielding an NFL team in Los Angeles after all that hard work. Don’t fuck with the NFL. They truly do not give a shit if you spend a billion dollars on your stadium, especially if you inexplicably sold the naming rights before gaining city approval and league approval. Seriously,this article is so good, I’m posting another hyperlink to it in my next sentence. Read this fucking amazing thing.

3. This one isn’t Leaf related at all, but it is an astounding achievement in the field of crime journalism, written by an author who claims that men are obsolete in today’s world. I’m not making a selective interpretation here. Her book is actually called The End Of Men.

Men are done. Who woulda thunk. Maybe that explains why the Toronto Maple Leafs are almost exclusively comprised of boys who can’t yet drink legally.

That’s the news, lose yer blues. Why? #LeafsAreActuallyGood

Leiweke makes a decisive hand gesture.

5. The parade he planned. Funny that nobody told him the parade thing had been a punchline in Toronto for decades before he arrived.

4. Giving Nonis a five-year extension. No further comment necessary.

3. Actually saying "I won't let the Leafs go through another collapse like that" in April 2014.

2. Saying "we will fix the Leafs" (again in April '14) then going on to preside over worst season in over 40 years, featuring yet another collapse (the fourth in four years).

1. Declaring he was "focused on the upcoming season" then resigning one day later.

Leiweke was a blustery, boastful windbag whose sole accomplishment as CEO of MLSE was donning a hard hat and altering a soccer field. Very glad to see him go. I just wish he'd address the media/fans and apologize for his gross incompetence and numerous broken promises. But of course he won't. But he will be remembered here as just another big mouth from the south (ahem, Brian Burke) who couldn't deliver a damn thing during the worst Leafs epoch ever, the ongoing Collapse Era.