A couple of unrelated things percolating in the brain pan after watching the Senators lose 1-0 to New Jersey last night. First is Ottawa’s absolutely pathetic home record, now 19-15-4 compared to 18-12-6 on the road.

This stretch was supposed to be Ottawa’s chance to catch some rest after that Florida road trip, rack up some points, even challenge for the division. Fewer games, most of them on home ice, and against plenty of mediocre teams was an ideal opportunity to lock up a playoff spot. Instead we’ve seen six points out of a possible 12, with Ottawa facing down the (somehow) always-challenging Canadiens, the seemingly unbeatable Penguins, the Jets on the road in the toughest building in the league, and then almost a week off for other teams to catch up before playing on the road in Philly.

Suddenly, the Senators are in a dogfight just to stay alive. Only four points up on eighth in the conference and the Sens’ inability to win games at home has dug them a small hole.

Of course, given what we’ve learned about this year’s Ottawa Senators, they’ll probably waltz right into Philly and win it 4-1. They’ve made a season out of taking games they had no business winning only to promptly lose to the Islanders or Leafs at home. Why on earth the team is so lacklustre at Scotiabank Place is hard to know, though I think it goes back to expectations.

The Senators can win away games with all of the pressure on their opponent, who is “supposed” to win, because the situation lends itself to their fast and loose style of play. Last night’s game, where the team executed sound breakouts and passes, got pucks on net, but then they simply couldn’t get their sticks on the rebound or keep pressure in front of the net. It seemed like a case of gripping the stick a little too tightly. As the game went on, even the most elementary powerplay execution – which they must be practicing non-stop these days – looked completely lost, with passes back to the point sailing all the way back to Bishop to corral. Suddenly, those few simple passes they were pulling off at even strength were flying all over the place with a man advantage.

Maybe the problem with home ice is the same problem that plagues the powerplay – when this team is supposed to have the advantage, it has a brain fart. When it feels fewer expectations, it will surprise you.

You could also see it with all the whining to the refs last night. Karlsson’s arms raised in disbelief, even the usually-Zen Alfredsson looking back for the call. The refs made some weird decisions last night, granted, but when the team is blaming everything else on the ice you can tell they’re hoping something, anything, comes along and resolves their play for them.

Basically I’ve been building all of this up so I could recommend that the team have a pizza party. Relax, guys.

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Everyone’s feeling mighty good about Ben Bishop these days. He’s playing lights out, and Bryan Murray must be basking in the accolades. Bishop’s been so impressive he even broke Sports Illustrated’s quasi-moratorium on hockey coverage long enough to be called the best deadline acquisition of the year. (Better than Paul Gaustad for a 1st? Better than…the other…trades that happened?)

I can’t help but think about Turris when he first came over from Phoenix. Those early games were used as all of the evidence we needed that Ottawa won the trade. Now, I’ve long maintained that Murray payed WAY too much for a risky second line center, and even when Turris was looking very serviceable I wasn’t thrilled with the deal. My attitude hasn’t changed, but I’m thinking there’s something we can learn about the early days of a trade.

Even a skeptic like me will admit that Turris came over looking energized. He had something to prove, was enjoying the ice time, or liked playing in a full building for a change. Whatever it was, he didn’t look out of place, developing chemistry with Alfredsson and putting up 13 points in his first 16 games. In the weeks that followed, however, he’s been ice cold. He has six points in his last 25 games.

If Turris doesn’t work out, the team hasn’t bet so much bet on him that they can’t turn it around. He’s an RFA on a very affordable deal. But if David Rundblad becomes even half the player Erik Karlsson is, it’s going to look like a mighty silly deal a year or two from now. It will look like Ottawa traded a high-end puck moving defenseman because they weren’t patient enough with him during a rebuild, when the only luxury you’ve got is patience. I won’t even talk about the draft pick, knowing that half the readership think draft picks are worthless and the other half think they’re the most valuable thing in the world.

So what’s this got to do with Ben Bishop? Well, he’s also a player with some NHL experience, albeit not as much. His organization deemed him expendable. He came to Ottawa with something to prove, energized, whatever. And just like with Turris, we’re prepared to call the trade a win and move on. It’s almost as if, just maybe, we should expect a peak in performance in the early days of a trade.

Now, I do agree with Elliott Friedman’s point that if Ottawa chooses to trade either Bishop or Lehner in the future they’ll get more than their 2nd rounder back for him. And it’s not like Ottawa threw in, say, Mika Zibanejad to get him or anything. I just think this whole “picks to win games now” thing is sort of short sighted. I don’t want to win a few games in March. (Though it would be nice.) I want to see Murray build a contender.

All of this to say that I’m reserving judgement for when Bishop’s played a few more games. He’s working out in the short term, and maybe that’s enough. I’m obviously not in the room with the scouts, and maybe they’re looking at the board and saying “we don’t like anyone in the second round anyway.” But the discussion of whether or not these trades that Murray is pulling off are worth it should never be “in the short term” discussions.

CORRECTION: Ron Wilson was hired by Cliff Fletcher, not Brian Burke. Thanks to reader Kartik Subramani for the correction.

In his book The Game, Ken Dryen wrote: “As players, they have been in the hands of their owner, and in the hands of the owner’s general manager, his scouts and coaches. Depending on them to draft the right players, to make the right trades, to give them a chance to do what they were good enough to do, and they have been badly let down. The tragedy is that what they had has been squandered and is now gone, with so little to show for it.” 

In this, Dryden was speaking about the 1979 Toronto Maple Leafs, playing in the shadow of owner Harold Ballard’s blinkered micromanagement. Key players were traded for middling returns. Prospect development was unheard of. Yes men abounded. The Leafs, located then and forevermore at the Center of the Hockey Universe, were subject to the whims of a tyrannical egotism that sucked air from the lungs of the franchise. Dryden suggests that this was particularly heartbreaking to see in 1979, contrasted with the fast-fading glories of the 1967 Stanley Cup winning team.

Over the 33 years since, this identity has hardened. That The Maple Leafs are losers is only more evidence of their status as underdog whose struggle is a nobler struggle: that of the blue collar worker against the capricious and unfair nature of the sport, i.e. the world. The team has been awful forever, but that awfulness has taken on a kind of perseverance in the face of utter pointlessness. All forms of team development swim against the current of this romantic undertow.

What strikes me most about Dryden’s description is his equation of wasted talents with “tragedy.” Dryden’s book, still a lonely, existential examination in contrast to the often saccharine standard that can be long-form hockey writing, lamented what could only be described as the injustice of seeing something so fiercely meaningful debased by incompetence and greed. Sittler and MacDonald wasted away on those mediocre teams, shades of the men they might have been in Montreal, Chicago, or Boston. Dryden lends pathos to those men, admitting that if hockey can be a lonely game while you play for a dynasty, then it is an unimaginable curse when played with a team that is not only underperforming, but culturally stagnant.

There are similarities between this Ballardian intractability and the current General Manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Brian Burke, who finds his team on the cusp of missing the playoffs for an incredible seventh straight season and 45 years from their last championship. Put a more diplomatic way, the differences between Ballard and Burke are differences of degrees. Both men adhere to binding principles that override all objective measures of hockey development. Both men cast themselves as defenders of the hockey faith against the inevitable dilution of the sport’s essence. And both men are responsible for some terrible hockey teams.

Their similarities tell us something about the central identity of a storied club that is paradoxically harmful to that club’s ability to win hockey games. It also says something valuable about the long, cold look in the mirror that the Toronto Maple Leafs must take before they can return to contention, and just how fundamental, even philosophical that overhaul must be. It’s no longer a matter of getting a high draft pick (though that would help). The Toronto Maple Leafs need to stop worshipping the romantic notion of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

It’s time for the Maple Leafs to allow humility into their lives.

In a salary capped league, where the notion of ‘parity’ abounds, there are plenty of mediocre clubs. What denigrates the Toronto Maple Leafs’ situation from merely unfortunate to the stuff of Greek tragedy is how intertwined their history has become with that sense of lost opportunity. A rebuild is a very difficult thing to embrace, particularly in a hockey market as rabid as Toronto’s. Ownership must be convinced to swallow the loss of revenue (which, in Toronto’s case, will never be an actual ‘loss’ so much as ‘lower profit than what’s possible’). The media needs to be convinced of the process so they don’t sour the fan base with their editorials, ubiquitous coverage and speculation. And finally, the fan base needs to be on board so as to not damage the brand too badly.

Prior to Brian Burke’s arrival, Toronto’s ownership and management had taken these difficult steps. General Manager John Ferguson Jr. was dismissed, and an interim General Manager—respected, old-school personality Cliff Fletcher, the “Silver Fox”—was appointed, with particular emphasis placed on the word ‘interim.’ Fletcher would be empowered to make the hard decisions, but didn’t have to worry about being liked. He knew his way to the exit already. He could be the bad guy.

In those early years of the rebuild, Fletcher sold off what veterans he could (largely hampered by No Trade clauses, the most famous of which belonged to Mats Sundin), bought out a few, traded up in the draft to pick promising defenseman Luke Schenn in the top-five, and traded for top line center Mikhail Grabovski (recently re-signed by Burke). In his short time as Toronto’s GM, Fletcher laid the foundation for a future team that was never to emerge. The rebuild would be difficult, but the hardest of those first steps had been taken. Most importantly, the Maple Leafs and their management began to look at their roster through a cold, utilitarian lens rather than with the blue-and-white colored glasses.

In 2008 Brian Burke came to the Toronto Maple Leafs from the Anaheim Ducks with all of the respect afforded an unstoppable force. While managing the Vancouver Canucks Burke had displayed an undeniable will, moving mountains to draft twin Swedes Henrik and Daniel Sedin side-by-side in the first round. (An act having about it certain masterpiece qualities in the art form of General Managing.) Burke convinced Hall of Fame defenseman Scott Neidermayer to join his brother Rob in Anaheim, where Scott made up one half of an unstoppable top defensive pairing with Chris Pronger that helped the Ducks to win the Cup in 2007. Burke demonstrated again and again that if inheriting a team whose fundamental building blocks were in place, he could do what was necessary to get them over the hump.

In Toronto, he would sign the most lucrative contract in the league for a General Manager. Fletcher was given a role as an advisor in the organization. And with his arrival, Burke once again gave the franchise an identity of inescapable gravity. The Toronto Maple Leafs as we had always known them—defiant, romantic, never compromising—were back. For better or worse.

In his almost five years since assuming the General Manager position, Burke has done everything in his power to resist the notion of a traditional rebuild, as if the sole missing factor in the equation for success is for the team to understand what Burke understands. It’s this fact, and the cyclical history it implies, that makes the Maple Leafs’ situation particularly tragic.

Burke appointed his good friend Ron Wilson as coach, Burke only recently assented to firing his good friend, the Fletcher-appointed Ron Wilson, despite the team having only one winning (non-playoff) season in four years. Wilson was replaced with Burke’s other good friend, ex-Anaheim coach Randy Carlyle. In the middle of another lost season (albeit at a time when the Leafs still clung to a playoff spot), Burke awarded Wilson a one-year contract, admitting it was less about security than danger pay in the event that he might have to fire Wilson. At no point did the awful results of the previous seasons seem to factor in.

In his first year with the team, with the Leafs floundering and the playoffs out of reach, Burke picked up veteran goalie Martin Gerber on waivers. Gerber, his career on the line and with something to prove, led the team from what would have been a draft lottery pick to seventh last overall, where they drafted promising but second-tier Nazem Kadri.

Most controversially, Burke obtained the talented but unpopular scorer Phil Kessel from division rival Boston Bruins for a king’s ransom of two first round picks and a second round pick—less than he would have been required to pay if he had used an Offer Sheet, a tactic which Burke objects to on moral grounds—in a move that spurns the cheap Entry Level Contracts on which rebuilders thrive. Burke promptly signed the winger to a deal paying him over $5MM a season. The Maple Leafs finished second and ninth last in the league in the next two years to hand Boston—the defending champions no less—two foundational players in Tyler Seguin and Dougie Hamilton.

Burke has traded and overpaid for players like Dion Phaneuf and Colby Armstrong, known for playing with an edge but far from their prime. In many of his transactions Burke has been saved from disaster only by the missteps of the GMs with whom he was dealing, those few other lost souls like Calgary’s now-dismissed Daryl Sutter, beleaguered too by his own inability to adapt to the game.

As the language of the game has changed to capture diminishing margins of advantage—CORSI, Fenwick, QualComp—Burke has remained steadfast. Appearing with tie draped, untied around his neck, he isn’t embarrassed to express himself in terms like “truculence.” He calls a press conference to lament the diminished role of the enforcer in a game that he perceives to have lost its sense of honor. This is the man, after all, who challenged a ex-Oilers GM Kevin Lowe to a fistfight in a rented barn, and then later spoke about it as frankly as one would any natural path to conflict resolution.

Burke has announced in turn, and with characteristic publicity, his position on a number of ‘vital’ issues: front-loaded contracts, offer sheets, roster freezes before trade deadlines, how “the rats are taking over” the sport, and most persistently how Toronto should never build through the draft. Ever more puzzling, the practices to which he takes umbrage are not only enshrined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement, but embodied by a league-wide shift in the game. In this, Brian Burke’s principles automatically place his club at a disadvantage. And as during the Ballard years, Burke’s inflexibility provides more fuel for the “us-against-the-world” fire, solidifying the team’s conviction that it need only will itself to victory in a world where will is quantified and tallied on other team’s scouting reports.

On these and many other issues Burke is cast as the only good man in an immoral, dehumanized league. Like his closest comparable, Don Cherry (with whom he only naturally began to spar in the media recently), Burke’ authenticity makes him likeable. It validates what for many of us is our sense that the sport, so full of complexities and occasional crushing disappointments, was indeed better before, in some halcyon past, where all we remember, conveniently, are the victories.

I’m certainly not above liking Brian Burke. I don’t doubt the sincerity of his morals, or that they can be employed for enormous good. His stance on gay rights in hockey is not only admirable but essential, and an example to the rest of the sports leagues. But when it comes to building hockey teams, his morals just happen to be misplaced. Burke’s stance on gay rights demonstrates that he’s capable of change, of questioning his principles and changing his mind, doing what’s right for the greater good. Those no reason why he can’t do the same during the far less loaded discussion of whether or not the team should retain draft picks or fire an ineffective coach. 

The Leafs are already wildly profitable, a 79.5% stake in them having recently sold for an insane $1.32 billion, a number so big that it took two rival behemoth telecoms carriers partnering up to buy it. But a winning team in Toronto would not only be good for Toronto, and for Canada, but the league and the sport all over the world. Were Toronto to find itself in the playoffs and actually winning a game, the city would be exactly the place you would want to be. Interest begets interest.

Toronto is so far beyond the notion of “not buying tickets to send a message” that the decisions made in board rooms and managers’ offices take on the qualities of royal decrees. Their decisions take place in a vacuum without ramifications, where intense privilege allows those with power to humor abstract principles for diminishing returns.

The unique tragedy of the Toronto Maple Leafs is not that they are a mediocre team. They are not, like Columbus, Long Island, or Edmonton, in a perpetual state of rebuild, needing only to refine their development of top prospects and pair it with smart contracts given to key veterans. Watching the Leafs’ frequent pre-game ceremonies, which are arduously long and self-congratulatory, it becomes apparent that the Toronto Maple Leafs are on an island of their own making, adhering to values all their own, winning their own game but no one else’s. They are in purgatory.

These are exciting times for our Ottawa Senators: in a playoff spot despite spending less money on player salaries than my friends’ ball hockey team does on t-shirts. Jason Spezza and Erik Karlsson legitimate contenders for league MVP. A brash young net minder ready to win some games and run for mayor, though not necessarily in that order. What’s more, Ottawa has more prospects projected to be top six players than they’ve had, well, pretty much ever.

Here’s the thing: 1) a rebuild that delivers a solid window of contention requires more than one great draft, because most draft picks never work out, and 2) there are fates worse than being a truly terrible team. Just ask the Toronto Maple Leafs.

The danger with prospects is that before they ever make it to the NHL we have a tendency to look at them exclusively through the lens of their potential. What’s their upside? Their absolute ceiling? Somewhere in there the most likely scenario for their development is lost. In the rush of enthusiasm, players and, I think, management, would rather put all their chips on black and fantasize about the big win.

Mika Zibanejad projects as a really great top six player. By that I mean a 20 goal scorer with a solid two-way game and some edge. He has upside, sure, but he slots in best as a complimentary player. In other words, Jason Spezza he’s not.

Ditto for Stefan Noesen. Murray clearly saw something in this kid that others didn’t, as he used a mid-to-late round first on him when he was projected to go in the second round. And he’s having a really nice season with the Plymouth Whalers. But again, he’s a Mike Fisher type. We’ll love him, but he’s not single-handedly winning us any games.

Matt Puempel is a different type of player, a pure scorer, but he’s had terrible concussion problems while playing for the Pete’s. He’s either going to score a lot of goals in the NHL or never make it there.

Then there are your prospects who project as third liners, like Jakob Silfverberg and Andre Petersson. You need guys like this, but we’re talking Nick Foligno types who will spend their time in Ottawa on the edge of top six duty.

Finally, you have your one dimensional players. Mark Stone has proven he can dominate lesser leagues but I’m skeptical can transition a power forward game to the NHL while lacking skating and size. I think Nikita Filatov plays on the moon these days.

Don’t get me wrong: together, these are the types of players that make up the heart and soul of a team, and I’m thrilled to have them. They constitute the kind of depth Ottawa’s lacked forever. But they aren’t cornerstones to build a championship around. With Ottawa unable to attract top end free agent talent, or rightly disinterested in going after the Brad Richards style contracts, you’re left with something of a nightmare scenario: a team forever on the bubble, hoping to sneak into the playoffs and go on a run, and years from being able to launch another rebuild.

This becomes especially easy to imagine when you see Spezza and Michalek exiting their peak years, Alfredsson retired, Phillips in the third year of his puzzling contract, and so on.

A rebuild is something that comes along once in a decade or so, and you have to get it right if you want to win a cup. We’ve got a team worthy of our support as fans, who are fun to watch and completely likeable. But I fear that Ottawa didn’t move themselves any closer to the ultimate goal of winning a cup.

I’ll be as excited as the next guy when this team lines up for puck drop in game one of the playoffs this year. I listened to a Leafs podcast the other day and you should hear them talk about their team about to miss the seventh straight year of playoffs. At this point they’d probably give up five first round picks just to experience some playoff hockey, even if they get swept. It’s a good time to be a Sens fan. But I can’t help but think that last year’s sell-off didn’t go far enough, or didn’t extend to this year, and we cashed it all in for one Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid moment in the first round of the playoffs. (The Bolivian Army will be played by the Boston Bruins.)

It’s hard to think this way when the team is so much fun to watch. Let me put it another way: if in the depths of last year, when the team didn’t win a game in February, if I had asked you if you would prefer a prospect like Nail Yakupov or a free pass to the first round to roll the dice with this lineup against whoever you met, what would you say?