The trades were a good start, they unloaded Blake's huge contract which is a great win for Burke, especially since no one thought he'd be able to unload it, and they got rid of Toskala who has just been a clusterfuck since he got to Toronto, hopefully JS will be able to find his old form, but that deal at least made them stronger in goal. I would have liked to see them get something for Blake, but I guess when his contract is huge and Toskala is a pylon you have to give up a bit more.
Phaneuf should help the defence if he can get over this hump he's been on in his development, he seems to have stalled, but he may have just got to used to Calgary. Now the Leafs have a big problem with salaries for the defence, almost half their cap is taken up on the point, Beauchemin, Komasarek, Kaberle, Schenn, and now Phaneuf, I reckon you'll see Kaberle traded before the deadline, probably for a goal scorer up front to make up for the loss of Hagman and Stajan's offence. Although I'd rather see Komasarek gone, they should have never picked him up, he's a big man, but he has no idea how to use his size and seems like a really weak man the way he get bullied around, also I've never seen someone so big be such a terrible fighter and hitter.
I'm going to miss White, he's easily been the Leafs best defenceman this season, and has probably been playing better than Phaneuf, he's a solid d-man for a guy who isn't the biggest player in the world, much like Blake, as much as I didn't like Blake for his lack of offence the guy had the heart of someone who is much bigger, Blake would always be the first in the corner and would never pussy out if he heard footsteps behind him.
As Burke said 'we're open for business', so hopefully a couple of more trades can at least turn the second half of the season around and get that pick the gave to Boston for Kessel out of the lottery.
This is why Campbell and Bettman are idiots, they seem to think Ken Dryden is a 'politician', which he obviously is, but he's also one of the greatest players to have played the game, and Campbell dismisses his opinion on the head shot debate?
Quote:
Mind your own business, Campbell tells politicians
The consensus from an informal poll of NHL general managers, coaches, executives and players to the recent outcry from politicians and others about the league's need to deal with head shots can be summed up as, “Butt out. We take the issue seriously and we're working on it.”
“I don't comment on their business and I don't appreciate them commenting on ours,” NHL director of hockey operations Colin Campbell said yesterday. “We take our business seriously.
“The [Patrice] Cormier thing gets this going but it hasn't changed our focus or what we're going to do and how we're going to do it.”
Campbell was reacting to comments made by member of Parliament Ken Dryden, the former goaltender and Toronto Maple Leafs GM, and by Jim Flaherty, the federal Finance Minister.
Dryden said the NHL should declare all hits to the head as attempts to injure, which would mean more severe punishment on the ice.
Flaherty said the NHL needs to take the lead in legislating such hits out of the game because it has allowed a culture that accepts head shots.
Both Dryden and Flaherty, who said they were speaking as individuals and not as politicians, spoke out in the wake of Cormier's suspension for the rest of the season and the playoffs by the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League for a hit on Mikael Tam of the Quebec Remparts. Cormier and his team, the Rouyn-Noranda Huskies, said the punishment was too harsh and plan to appeal.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said the league will crack down on head shots beginning next season.
The first step will come in early March when the league's general managers are expected to propose a rule change or tweak the present rules at their annual meetings in Florida. Any changes have to go through the NHL's competition committee and then be approved by the board of governors.
While the NHL people generally agree something needs to be done because the game is much faster now, which means more violent collisions, they argue that change needs to be done carefully because they do not want to take physical contact out of the game.
Maple Leafs general manager Brian Burke said the struggle to reconcile safety with the crowd-pleasing aspects of a sport is a similar problem that is faced by groups like NASCAR.
“They could make NASCAR completely safe today,” he said. “They could put regulators on the cars so they couldn't go more than 55 miles per hour. But no one would watch.
“We could eliminate concussions in the NHL today. We could put football helmets on the players but we would have four quadriplegics by Christmas. Any item of equipment you put on players can become a weapon.
“So how do we keep that contact in but make the workplace as safe as we can?”
Burke says the critics have to accept the fact an NHL rink will never be completely safe.
He says players accept a certain amount of risk when they play the game.
However, Burke, once a hard-liner on the issue of contact, says he realizes action needs to be taken on hits where a player is not in a position to anticipate or avoid a hit.
Campbell said the league takes the issue seriously enough that it has changed its approach to the GMs' meetings. Usually, the 30 GMs are broken into smaller groups at the meetings and assigned a list of issues to study. This time, Campbell will form a break-out group, in advance of the meetings, of about eight general managers to study all forms of contact with the head and concussions. The group will make a report to the other GMs at the meetings.
The NHL's hockey operations department is currently assembling material for the break-out group such as videos of hits and information on equipment changes. Campbell said he expects to have the group formed no later than three weeks before the meetings, which begin March 8.
“This is a complex topic,” said Campbell, who argues that critics have not given enough credit to the NHL for its system of supplemental discipline for head shots, in which players can serve suspensions without pay. “One thing that is never mentioned is how much money players lose [in salary] when they are suspended.
“A guy like Ed Jovanovski lost as much as $200,000 [U.S.]. People say he makes a lot of money but that is still a lot of money. If [the GMs] want to increase the number of games [in suspensions], which is what the critics seem to want, then we will.”
Carolina Hurricanes GM Jim Rutherford has long been an advocate for dealing with head shots and concussions. He said Dryden's suggestion of treating all hits to the head as attempts to injure is worth considering.
“I agree we don't have to change any rules if we define how an infraction is going to be called because we do have attempt-to-injure in the rule book,” Rutherford said. “You could use that call if a referee wanted, but I don't think they have been given that directive.”
Leafs head coach Ron Wilson argues that even though the NHL game is played with more speed than before, and there will be incidents, the players generally have more respect for each other than in other leagues. But he concedes that some changes are needed.
“I think we should allow some interference [on fore-checkers] to protect defencemen who go back to get the puck,” he said. “We're all a little bit at fault for that. I get angry at our forwards when they let a defenceman off the hook – you know, finish your check.
“But often you're in a grey area. When you are finishing your check, the opponent can turn the wrong way at the last second and it becomes an ugly hit. We have to be careful, though, because once you start regulating that sort of thing there would be no hitting in the game at all and I don't think the game would be much fun to watch.”
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Personally I blame the lack of respect amongst players and the shittly and inconsistent suspensions given out by the NHL, like the Richards/Booth hit, the NHL needs some consistency in the disipline they give out, rather than using the wheel of punishment as they seem to be doing now.