You know I am not a Grapes fan, but I will give him credit for going on Boston TV and calling one of their boys a quitter. Not sure which was louder, Cherry’s jacket or Mike Milbury.

TSM

@yyzsportsmedia

Here’s your bikini of the day from GetABikini.com

On Fan 590 Tonight-

- Grapeline with Don Cherry & Brian Williams at 4:45
- Bob McCown’s co-host from 5:00 to 7:00 is
- Jim Kelley
- Brian Cooper
- New Blue Jays Pitching coach, Bruce Walton

On 640 with Brady and Watters thanks to Mike S.:

- Peter Chiarelli, general manager of the Boston Bruins

- Jolly Jonas Siegel from Boston to preview tonight’s Leafs-Bruins game

- hockey insider Pierre McGuire at 6:10

- show ends at 6:30 to make way for the Leafs pre-game show

(I know NESN is a tv network but Edwards happened to be on the radio)

I was in the car today listening to the fan 590 enroute to physio for my rehabbing knee when Jack Armstrong started an interview with Jack Edwards who covers the Boston Bruins for NESN.

I’m not sure if anyone else out there caught the interview, but it was fantastic! It was everything we don’t get from Howard Berger or jolly Jonas siegel.

Edwards (is he the same guy who used to be on ESPN?) was informative, entertaining, opinionated yet respectful and certainly didn’t dump all over the Bruins fans. He called out there management for missing the boat to make a big trade two or three weeks ago, but didn’t sound like a raving lunatic in doing so.

Edwards comes across as Bruins fan but without calling the players by their nicknames, he didn’t have a love in with the hosts most importantly he sounded professional. He also didn’t sound like he had am agenda.

As I listened to Edwards I couldn’t help but be jealous that our radio stations don’t have a guy like this on to talk as the guy who lives, eats and breathes with the club.

Maybe one day we will, for now one can only hope.

I tried to find a link or clip but the fan didn’t have one. If anyone does send it along.

TSM

@yyzsportsmedia

College of Sports Media Game of the Night:

It’s a battle of the last two President Cup winners in Motown tonight as the San Jose Sharks take on the Detroit Red Wings. San Jose comes into this one on fire. They’re looking for a sweep on their three day road trip and have won six in a row. One of the reasons for the Sharks’ success is the play of their goaltender Evgeni Nabakov. Nabakov was the NHL’s third star last week, posting a 3-0 record to go along with a 0.97 goals against average. They’ve also been getting some pretty good play up front. In his last nine games former captain Patrick Marleau has six goals and ten assists. The Red Wings have been good, but not great. Injuries continue to plague the team and goaltending has been somewhat of an issue. Top defensemen Brian Rafalski and Jonathan Ericsson are battling the flu and are day-to-day, while forwards Valtteri Filipulla and Johan Franzen are on the injured reserve. Starting goaltender Chris Osgood has been decent this year. He’s been especially good as of late. Osgood has only allowed one goal in two games and on Tuesday night he earned his 50th shut out blanking the Boston Bruins. This season he’s started ten games and has a 5-2-2 record with .902 save percentage. The question for Detroit is what happens when Osgood is off his game or needs a rest. Back up Jimmy Howard has been average at best. In five starts he’s 1-2-1 with a 3.42 goals against average.

Are you panicking? No, really. Three games in, have the alarm bells started to ring? When the Blue Jays were on their tear early on, where you ready to annoint them playoff bound? When a guy hits a homerun or scores a goal in game one of the season, do you project their season totals???? I mean really.

We Toronto Sports fans take a lot of shit. Some of it is deserved. Most of it is fabricated in attempt to sell papers (who reads em) or radio ads(who listens)… Listening and looking around this town, you would think the Maple Leafs are this years version of the Detroit Lions. Wholly smokes folks, it’s 3 stinking games. It’s three games with how many new faces? Get a grip.

The good news, I think is that most of the hysteria is media generated. No one I know has hit the panic button yet. It is way too early for that. With all due respect, those who call in to Leafs talk aren’t, in my mind anyways representative of Leafs fans. Seriously, do you know anyone who calls in to those shows? That is not to say that people don’t…It’s just that the notion that those who do are speaking for the larger group is bunk. I mean the larger group doesn’t think that the guy from Maple is bang on when he suggested the Jamal Mayers for a first round draft pick.

So, is it the media who creates hysteria and the fans feed off of it, or are fans really panicked as has been suggested. I am not buying that it is the fans. I don’t see it, I don’t hear it and it makes no sense. It makes about as much sense as the Bruce Garrioch Ron Wilson story today.

Look, this is really simple. If the Leafs are any worse than they were last year when the season ends and lottery positions are finalized, Brian Burke is going to have some explaining to do. If the Boston Bruins are on the podium with the Maple Leafs pick things have gone dramatically astray. If this team regresses after the overhaul the lineup has undergone, something is amiss. It’s really that simple. To reach that conclusion after game 3?????????? I am sorry. We aren’t, collectively anyways, that dumb are we???????

I certainly hope not. Saturday could be ugly by the way. If the same Leafs team shows up that did against Ottawa, Pittsburgh may have a field day.

Chins up leafs nation. It’s a long haul, and we’ve only just begun.

Call it the “Sidney Crosby Effect”. Since the Penguins took Sid the Kid first over-all from the Rimouski Oceanic of the QMJHL at the 2005 NHL Entry Draft, the league has developed no less than four first rounders in four of the five years since. Compare that to the six years prior in which the QMJHL had seen no more than three of their players selected in any first round, and it seems clear that the league has returned to relevance in the junior hockey world.

As Sportsnet.ca said in their preview of the ‘Q’, “parity remains the theme in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League [heading into] the 2009-2010 season. Much like last season, where four teams (the Drummondville Voltigeurs, Shawinigan Cataractes, Moncton Wildcats, and Quebec Remparts) all finished the regular season with more than 100 points, there is a great deal of balance among the teams at the top of the league.

However, most of the on-ice and off-ice headlines (at least early in the season) will belong to one man / family in particular. The surname Roy will be bandied around quite a bit, with the senior Patrick remaining behind the bench for the contending Remparts after a summer in which his name was linked to the vacant head coach position of the Colorado Avalanche, which later went to Joe Sacco.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Roy, the son of the Montreal Canadiens legend, faces an October 7 trial date as the defendant against charges of assault. Jonathan, goaltender for the Remparts at the time, was arrested following a beating administered to opposing netminder Bobby Nadeau (Chicoutimi Sagueneens) on March 22, 2008.

But there is some hockey to be played too.

For one thing, the Voltigeurs are back to defend their league title, minus their top two league-leading scorers from last season. Yannick Riendeau has graduated and will hope to catch on with the Boston Bruins, who signed him on the strength of his Q-best 126-point season, while high-scoring teammate Danny Masse is staying in Quebec as a Canadiens signee. Despite the losses, Drummondville should still be a formidable contender with C Chris DiDomenico, a Leafs draft pick and a member of Canada’s gold medal-winning 2009 World Junior team, and 2009 first round draft pick (14th over-all, Florida Panthers) D Dmitry Kulikov.

Following a season widely considered a disappointment, Roy’s Remparts, who Sportsnet.ca has said are “widely regarded as the top team in the league this season,” have reloaded with two key new pieces and will look to topple Drummondville. Quebec is fresh off a 4-1 ouster to the Cataractes in the QMJHL semis last year, which fuelled off-season moves that brought in starting goalie Peter Delmas and agitator / enforcer Danick Paquette. They will contribute defence and grit to a team already stacked with offensive talent, as forwards Kelsey Tessier and Marc-Olivier Vallerand return. In four games this season, Vallerand has already collected four goals and four assists.

The Cataractes and the Wildcats are both coming off of breakthrough seasons, and many observers are curious to see how they follow last year’s performance. The Cataractes fell one win shy of the franchise’s first QMJHL championship, falling 4-3 to the Voltigeurs after climbing back from a 3-1 series deficit. However, amidst the heartbreak, the regular season represented a 35-point jump in their record from the previous campaign.
That improvement was second to the Wildcats’ rise of 45 points between the ‘07-08 and ‘08-09 seasons. Though Moncton did not advance past the quarter-finals, but that could change this year due to the rapid improvement of blue chip defensive anchor Brandon Gormley. Gormley was the only player in the Q on CHL.ca’s list of top five NHL prospects heading into the 2010 draft.

With no single dominant force in the QMJHL along the lines of, say, the OHL’s Windsor Spitfires, there are several teams who could make their mark as the league’s elite.

So, if you haven’t had your Phil of Kessel yet, wait till tomorrow when talk radio gets to chime in on the deal. I suspect that when Landry and Stellick take to the air it will be all Kessel all the time. Unless of course Landry was at curing reality camp again this weekend. All the talking heads will be in full Kessel mode tomorrow. Should be interesting. Will he be on the morning show? Which Lunch show will he be on? Both????

Anyway, here are some cool things and thoughts for a Sunday:

The summary of why the Bruins dealt Kessel:

” All in all, Kessel and his agent orchestrated a clever, successful and lucrative free-agent departure. When it became clear to everyone that Kessel preferred to be in Toronto more than anywhere else, including his hometown of the last three seasons, Chiarelli had little option but to acquiesce.

Had Chiarelli not swapped Kessel to Toronto for a pair of first-round picks and a second-rounder, he likely would have been faced with committing $27 million to a kid with 66 career goals and not much grit in his tool kit.

And if Chiarelli chose not to match the presumed offer sheet, then the compensation, as spelled out by the collective bargaining agreement, would have been only first-, second-, and third-round draft picks. The potential for Brian Burke rolling out the offer sheet ultimately forced the deal, with the Leafs GM deftly, in concert with Kessel’s stated desires, forcing Chiarelli’s hand.

No other suitor stepped up with an offer, Chiarelli also confirmed, and that was because no club wanted to yield assets to Boston and then be positioned to suffer Burke’s roundhouse right of an offer sheet. Imagine if the Predators swapped Colin Wilson for Kessel one morning, only to see him that afternoon sign the Leafs’ offer sheet?

Just wasn’t going to happen, not without Kessel checking off on a sign-and-trade deal, and he wasn’t going to do that after determining over the summer that he wanted to wear Toronto’s blue and white.”

That from Kevin Paul Dupont in the Boston Globe.

Toronto Sun writer Mike Zeisberger has a good piece on where things may have gone awry in Boston:

” Phil Kessel “was pissed off.”

At the Boston Bruins.

At coach Claude Julien.

And at the embarrassment of being banished to the press box as a healthy scratch for three games in a post-season grudge match against the rival Montreal Canadiens.

If ever there was an example of the rocky relationship between the Bruins braintrust and Kessel, this was it.

It was the first round of the 2008 playoffs and Julien, having seen his Bruins blown out of the Bell Centre in the opening game by the high-flying Habs, decided to dump Kessel from the lineup.

Julien wanted more grit. He wanted better two-way play from his forwards. He was, in his own opinion, getting little of either from Kessel.

So, there was the young forward, sitting in the rafters, decked in a spiffy suit, feeling helpless as he watched his team muster just four goals during his three-game absence.

It gnawed away at his gut. How couldn’t it?

“It was tough sitting out,” Kessel admitted at the time. “It was very disappointing. It was a tough time for me.”

And maybe, just maybe, it was the beginning of the end, at least in terms of the marriage between Kessel and the Bruins.

Kessel responded by scoring twice in his return to the lineup. How’s that for making a statement?

Julien is one of the best bench bosses around, a no-nonsense guy who goes by the credo: “My way or the highway.”

But The Benching, as it is now known, was something Kessel never forgot, according to those close to the young sniper. ”

Ron Wilson isn’t going to give Kessel the warm and fuzzy’s either, but one has to believe that Brian Burke knows that.

The best article on the state of the Maple Leafs today is written by Damien Cox:

“But what Burke has indisputably achieved is a remarkable transformation of a team and an organization in slightly more than six months.

Last winter, the Leafs were an outfit adrift without personality, a club that had scored a bunch of goals early in the season, was terrible defensively, wasn’t ornery to play against and, depending on the game, might fill out half or more of its lineup with skilled European-born and trained players.

Today, the Leafs are destined to be one of the NHL’s goonier teams, a club dominated by North American talent and muscle, a team that surely has a distinct personality sculpted entirely by Burke.

He has changed the roster, added front office personnel, lured one of the game’s top goalie coaches and revamped the pro and amateur scouting staffs. A club that not that long ago seemed unattractive to players with other choices has in rapid succession outbid stiff competition for Mike Komisarek, François Beauchemin, Colton Orr, Christian Hanson, Tyler Bozak, netminder Jonas Gustavsson and, really, Kessel.

For each of these players there were at least three bidders and in some cases four times that many. But Burke got them all.

Suddenly, the Leafs are a destination, mostly because of Burke’s personal touch. He pursued Hanson and Bozak for months. He twice went to Sweden to chase Gustavsson. Kessel, while disputing Boston GM Peter Chiarelli’s assertion that he asked for a trade, clearly decided some time ago that being aggressively courted in Toronto was a great deal more enjoyable than being tolerated in Boston.”

As I asked the other night, has the tide turned in Toronto. We have been told for a long time that no one wants to come here. Suddenly players seem to be saying that they want to play here. Will the Leafs win the cup? Who the hell knows. Winning starts with an attitude and character. The malaise that was the old team, the Mats Sundin/Tie Domi country club atmosphere appears to be finally eradicated. The fact that guys like Cox and Simmons et. all are saying so publicly says a lot.

So with Kessel here, what else can we talk about? Well, the Coyotes decision isn’t newsworthy yet. Gretzky isn’t in camp and continues to get crucified for it. The lack of respect for the great one, whom I wasn’t a huge fan of before by the way, is nothing short of pathetic. Whether or not he is deserving of the money, the reality is the guy put the league on his back for YEARS. Ownership (backed by Bettman) hired the guy and guess what, he has fulfilled his end of the bargain. From where I am sitting, the guy who is arguably the greatest of all time is getting shafted. But no, that isn’t what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about it the NHLPA.

Forget the Coyotes, forget the Detroit Lions, forget the Toronto Blue Jays, there is no bigger joke in sports than the NHLPA. What a farce. What a total embarrassment for those who worked so hard for this union to be built. Those surrounded by the action should be embarrassed. Those talking from a far should be more so. Here is what sounds like has happened. A power play. Plain and simple, those who weren’t in control wanted it and got it. The way of the PA is equally as simple. They had Eagleson, we know the mess he left. As a result they brought in the hardest of hardliners, Bob Goodenow. As a result of his actions they appointed Ted Saskin. As a result of his actions they brought in Kelly. For every action there is a reaction. The constitution is too soft, so they go off the charts heavy. It’s too heavy, they go easy. It’s too easy…… How dumb are these guys? Seriously?

The press coverage over the last week would be enough to embarrass me into quitting the PA if I could. Consider this:

“According to a report from Montreal radio station CKAC – the same station that correctly broke the news and details of Roberto Luongo’s contract extension last month – former Detroit defenceman Chris Chelios is planning on speaking with other players about the possibility of bringing Kelly back, claiming that he had been misinformed. This comes not quite three weeks after Kelly was knifed in a 10-hour, all-night meeting in Chicago, against all common sense.”

Misinformed? Are you kidding me?? You are the guy who is responsible for the guy being hired. Then, you lead the effort to have him fired in the middle of the night AND NOW YOU WERE MISINFORMED????? Who admits that? Who leads a witch hunt on bad info?? Oops we fired you by mistake??? I mean somewhere Kelly’s lawyer has to be loving this.

“I definitely want to know how things happened,” Crosby told ESPN. “I am part of the union like every other player and I think we all deserve a good explanation.”

UMMMMMMMMMMMM, NO. You don’t deserve an explanation Sidney. You see, the majority of your membership doesn’t care about the issues really. Guys like you don’t take an active role in the PA, you pawn that responsibility off on the Matt Stajan’s of the world. If you cared, you would be your team rep. You would know what you signed off on when you ratified your constitution. You would be going to meetings, making calls and be up on the issue BEFORE this shit happened. Don’t cry about spilled milk after the fact! You put the current executive in place, mostly out of apathy. You, and I don’t mean to pick on Crosby, and your union brothers got exactly what you deserved.

“”You’re a player rep and the players are relying on their reps to do their job,” Stajan said. “If we could have all 750 players there, great, but that’s hard to do. We felt a change was needed and we made it.

“You had a leader (Kelly) who came under an office review,” Stajan added. “There was proof there (the office) was not functioning well, and that’s on the leader. In any business, that’s what can happen in situations like that (reviews). I don’t know why anything else is coming out now, some guys are speculating, but that’s what we decided and it was unanimous.”

As much as I loathe Matt Stajan, I can tell you this, I have a ton of respect for that position. He’s the guy who went to the meetings. He’s the rep. He’s the guy that got the job because no one else wanted it. I’d be pissed if I were him too. He got stuck doing a job and now after he did what he was asked to do people are pissed???? Give me a break.

“Indeed, the Block Report not only solved nothing, it exacerbated the mistrust and contempt that factions of the PA had for each other following its collective bargaining collapse. Union leaders — excuse the oxymoron — then produced a constitution ratified by an ignorant membership that neutered the position of executive director.”

Look, if the membership is/was ignorant it has only one place to look…in the mirror. Every player who voted in favor of the constitution has an agent. Every player could have read the damn thing. Every player, however was sick and tired of the mess. Every player wanted to get back to playing hockey. So they passed the buck. The allowed others to deal with their problems. Now they are bitching????

” Neither, however, does the Players’ Association, now apparently spoken for by people such as Matt Stajan and Andrew Ference, the latter the Boston player rep who last year famously suggested the wrong players were making too much money. Sidney Crosby isn’t the only one who wants answers. Players across the league have been left in the dark. The internal union Web site is widely disparaged by membership as more a source of propaganda than information. Players are asking for answers. Maybe this time they’ll get some. Maybe this time they’ll get answers they never received from the Block Report. Maybe this time they will be entrusted with details of their history so that they don’t repeat it.”

Sorry Larry, I am not buying it. The players have only themselves to blame for guys like Stajan and Ference be leaders. Any player who is pissed about the leadership I am sure could have been their team rep. Do you think there was one team with a battle for the rep position?? Not a chance. These guys couldn’t have cared less. They made their beds and now they are lying in them. To say otherwise is insulting.

It’s almost as insulting to hear a guy like Roenick talk about the positions on the board were held by young uneducated kids. As opposed to the harvard grad degree carrying vets like you JR??? Funny how when asked if he would be interested in playing a role on the PA Roenick took about 3 tenths of a second to say no. All the talking heads in the union have a ton to say now. Where were they before?

“”We have had numerous discussions with our clients and other players around the league regarding the dismissal of Paul Kelly as executive director of the NHLPA,” agents J.P. Barry and Pat Brisson of CAA Sports said in a statement.

“Some of the things we have learned about the process are very troubling to us. We are encouraging each of our clients to educate themselves with union matters so they can understand how these types of decisions are reached. We believe that a strong and unified voice is necessary. In order for that to happen, the majority of players must be heard.”

And there, sports fans is what you really need to know. What, or who is in large part behind this?? Agents. Rest assured that the comments by Sidney Crosby were at the request of his agents. Again, not a slam against Crosby, but rather a hunch. There has always been infighting at the top about power and who is the driving force behind the PA. Many an agent would love to be driving that bus. Who is really behind the curtain???? One day we will learn. Is it really Eric Lindros? Is it Bonnie Lindros????? Is it Chelios?? Rest assured, whomever is pulling the strings is doing so not for the good of the players, certainly not for the good of the game. No, there is only one force that could cause this, selfish greed.

Quotes on the PA came from here, here and here

By the way, who’s your favorite famous Phil?

Collins?
Donahue?
Esposito?
Bourque?
Hartman?
Jackson?
Lesh?
Dr.

And there you have it. The big deal is done, and now all that is left to do is play the games. It says here that the pressure on the team just got turned up a few notches. No more tank nation that’s for sure! This team has to make the playoffs for this deal to make any sense whatsoever. Below is a list of the early returns on the deal, there isn’t much right now, so we’ll do it again tomorrow night. Here is my thought. Most of us believed in Burke when he got the job. We can’t think that over night he got stupid. We have to faith that he knows what he is doing. I hope that he can recover some semblance of these picks in moving some of his surplus defencemen and forwards too:

TSN:

“The drama surrounding Phil Kessel has finally come to an end as the Boston Bruins have traded their disgruntled sniper to the Toronto Maple Leafs in exchange for a first and a second round pick in 2010, and a first round pick in 2011. Kessel and the Maple Leafs then quickly agreed to terms on a new five-year, $27 million deal. The trade ends a saga that began during the lead-up to the NHL Draft when Kessel originally appeared to be headed to Toronto in exchange for defenceman Tomas Kaberle and a draft pick. However, the deal was scuttled at the last moment due to a miscommunication over the pick.”

That’s all you need to know in a nutshell.

The Star:

“The trade represents a possible change in strategy for Burke. Up until now, he’s been content to stock up on draft picks and defenceman, but has done little to bolster the Leafs’ thin offence. While giving up three high picks is a big price to pay for Kessel’s negotiating rights, the Leafs also have several promising rookies in Tyler Bozak, Viktor Stalberg, Nazem Kadri and Christian Hanson, all of whom have scored during in the team’s first two pre-season games.”

The pressure on these young kids to perform just got much greater don’t you think?

The Globe and Mail:

“The Leafs could have signed Kessel, a restricted free agent, to an offer sheet at the cost of a first, second and third-round pick. But Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli stated he had ownership’s backing to match any offer sheet, therefore retaining the rights to the player. The University of Minnesota product was diagnosed with testicular cancer in his rookie season on Dec. 12, 2006. He missed 11 games to recover from surgery, played in a two-game in the AHL and scored once before returning to the Bruins. Later that season, he was given the Bill Masterton Trophy for perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.”

In Burke we have to trust. I think that Burke looks at the college kids has found draft picks. Perhaps he thinks that he can dip into that well again next year for younger players.

The best article this evening (the Boston papers don’t have a word on the deal as of yet) belongs to the National Post and Bruce Arthur:

“Sure, the Leafs general manager risked ridicule by proclaiming he wanted to trade for the No. 1 pick in the draft and then failing to do so, but that didn’t exactly saddle the team with long-term liability. It just meant he swung, and missed. “I have no problem with failing publicly,” Burke said last week, “as long as out fans know we want to hit home runs.” Phil Kessel, however, could be different. Phil Kessel could be a home run.”

It’s a hell of a price for a could be. Draft Schmaft got a certain former GM in a bit of trouble. Burke seems to be saying the same thing here.

“Why Kessel? Well, he scored 36 goals last season, he was a point-per-game player in Boston’s last two playoff runs, and he can flat-out fly. And did we mention he is 21 years old? For a Maple Leafs team whose forwards could best be described as a mixed and unappetizing bag, Kessel is a top-end sniper in the race to rebuild.”

Indeed, the upside is huge. Should the leafs be a lottery team this year or next, this is a disaster.

“And yet Boston refused to fit him into its admittedly jammed salary structure. Which seems odd, until you hear the whispers about Kessel’s inability to get along with teammates, or the way he and coaches tend to disagree when he is criticized, or his distaste for extra work.

There is a passage in Gare Joyce’s recent book, Future Greats and Heartbreaks, which details Kessel’s disastrous pre-draft interview with Columbus. All the Columbus guys said was “Teammates,” and Kessel said he didn’t understand. But after an uncomfortable silence, Kessel started to blurt out answers. “I don’t have a problem with my teammates,” he claimed. “I don’t have a problem with Jack Johnson,” he added. On and on he went. Apparently, he didn’t come across as a bad kid; just as a socially vacant one. And as badly as the interview went, after Kessel walked out, one of the Columbus guys said, a little dreamily, “Kessel’s a hell of a talent.”

The pressure on one Ron Wilson is much greater for next year isn’t it. His team has to win and win now. No more nice efforts. This team has to make the playoffs this season. Burke is betting that Wilson and Co. will be able to get Kessel to the next level. If not, who do you think goes overboard first, Kessel or Wilson?

“Eye of the beholder, indeed. If Kessel really is a media-shy problem child – well, this is not the right place for him. The most essential characteristic a Toronto Maple Leaf has to have is mental fortitude. The pressure in this hockey-crazy town can crack you; the celebrity can soften you like a lobster on the boil. Similarly, the two most essential characteristics a Toronto Maple Leafs general manager are simple. One, they need the ability to tell who can and cannot deal with this environment. Plenty of players are happier in the relatively calm climes of the United States, where nobody bothers you when you eat.”

One has to hope that Burke has done his homework on what he just bought. If the media pressure is too much for Kessel, we will know very quickly. The problem is there just isn’t enough veterans on the team to help him out. Who is going to show him the ways? There are a few guys, I guess. Enough??? We shall see.

“However the Kessel experiment goes, we will learn something about Brian Burke that we did not already know. If Kessel is a star who manages to fit into Ron Wilson’s program, then Burke’s vision will be proven to extend beyond whether a guy can make somebody else pick their teeth out of the glass. This could be, as we mentioned, a home run.

But if Kessel cracks, then the questions start. The road to perdition has traditionally been paved by GMs too willing to part with draft picks, in this town. Has Burke, like too many of his predecessors, been rendered overly impatient by the blue and white beast? Naturally, Burke insists that isn’t happening. We believe him. But we’ll see.

“Just started the first of five years,” Burke said in an informal gathering with reporters last week. “I’m not going to succumb to instant response. We’re going to stay on the long-term plan, but we think we’ve short-circuited it. We think we took a shortcut.”

Kessel is a shortcut, all right. The question is to where. ”

The last trade we made with the Bruins I believe was for a guy named Raycroft. That one didn’t turn out so good. Kessel had one good year in Boston. Much like Raycroft. Here’s hoping and betting that Kessel turns out better than Raycroft.

Berger of course is steadfast in his opposition to the deal. His last two blogs have told us why he doesn’t think this is a deal that the Leafs should make.

Mccown basically said today that if the deal was for a first and second pick he would do it in a heartbeat. He wasn’t sure after that.

Hanky??? This was not one of his best days. He missed on this one big time. All of his posts today had Kessel either going nowhere or to Nashville. Not the finest moment for hockey’s most infamous blogger.

Cliff was famous for draft schmaft. Burke has in essence said the same thing hasn’t he… In Burke we trust. His team has to not be a lottery team the next two years in order for this deal to survive basic scrutiny. If they are….look out.

TSM

@yyzsportsmedia

2010 1st and 2nd round draft picksplus 2011 1st round pick.

Kessel signs 5 yr 27m deal

Details later