The Brian Burke Thread
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Guru Tugginmypuddah
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Corn Flake said:
Oscar Wilde. Or something.
Corn Flake
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Saint Nik said:
Oh my god stop being so ridiculous.
Corn Flake
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Saint Nik said:
Don't waste people's time picking apart a minor spelling mistake here or there.
crazyperfectdevil
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yeah ..i'm pretty sure those were point totals from the finish of actual seasons ...not their projected finish with 20 games left to play ... case in point..the projected total for the leafs 2 weeks ago would have been much higher ..considering that ..it seems a little premature to argue that aspect of the"rebuild"..
Corn Flake said:
I think we re-evaluate at the end of the season, but this team needs upgrades in nearly every position, like I've said before. I think Burke still believes we need a bonafide #1 Center. Our fourth line could use a marginal upgrade, but I think we've got the necessary players from the Marlies to fill the 3rd and 2nd line roles. If we're talking about development and improvement why are the Marlies left out of the equation?
I've mentioned this earlier, but I don't think the Bruins had highly touted prospects before they developed them. The majority of their prospects came out of the 2nd and 3rd rounds in Krejci, Marchand, Bergeron. Bergeron translated his game quickly to the NHL level, they developed Marchand until he was ready last year, and the same goes for Krejci. Granted their development seems to be somewhat quicker, but I don't think you can disregard the development of guys like Colborne and Frattin based on their AHL play (especially the many who seem to gush about Eakins). We just have to hope they can translate their game to the big club, and that is a variable you can't always predict with the greatest amount of accuracy.
And we've also got some promising talent beyond them as well: Nicolas Deschamps is showing a lot of improvement since being traded.
CW: Is this not to some extent rolling over your prospect roster? We let guys like Caputi and Aulie go because they didn't seem to be working in our organization for guys like Carter Ashton and Nicolas Deschamps while trying to find lost wallets at every turn.
Corn Flake said:
Burke made those comments so we end up blaming the deadline & media for the recent slide of losing 8 of 9 and guess what its clearly working on some people.
Fact is every other team goes through the same crap.. I hate excuses, and yes they do make millons i expect more..
Kin
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Bender said:
They're not but as was mentioned earlier how you view the Marlies is kind of going to be connected to your more general outlook on things as a whole. One of the things this year from my perspective has been that a lot of the young players who've gotten shots to break through haven't really seized them.
Bender said:
Captui & Aulie for Deschamps & Ashton is young prospect for young prospect. To me, that's closer to treading water - salvaging prospect value.
In my mind, rolling over the roster tends to move out older guys for younger players/assets building up a bigger snowball of good young talent to move forward with. In general theory that will compress more NHL talent on a roster into a quality young core with better price performance and more shots (seasons) to win it all as a group.
So the Ashton/Deschamps acquisitions don't perfectly fit that mold in my opinion (although both look like reasonable deals). Beauchemin for Gardiner or Kaberle for Colbourne are examples of rolling over older players for younger quality assets. Getting a 1st for MacArthur and signing an equivalent UFA in the summer is arguably also a form of rolling over a player to improve the youth assets because come July 1, your NHL roster is about the same with a UFA replacing MacArthur and you have an additional 1st round pick in your system.
If a GM rolls over a roster a couple of/few times like that, he ought to have a pretty strong system with some good quality youth to move forward with. To me, it's more productive towards winning a Cup than treading water to see if the current, marginal roster can make the playoffs with little chance of winning a Cup because the roster still has so many holes.
If a team gets the rolling over too spread out, then that also doesn't achieve the same effect. Once a team starts to contend, it's much tougher to roll over the roster because they need the depth and vets to contend.
To a degree, Burke's failure at "re-tooling" that resulting in some "rebuilding" last season and now to a tread water mode this deadline, is spreading the rolling over out (or ending it if they begin to contend next year).
At that point, the subsequent drafts continue to feed the NHL roster replacing older players but a team tends to burn up excess assets up trying to get that roster over the top. So the bigger the snowball of youth you've built up, the longer you can go with your core once that is built, trying to win it all.
If you try to contend too soon, more often than not, you run out of young assets and have to blow the thing up sooner.
cw said:
To a certain degree maybe they hired Burke at the wrong time. Maybe GM's have specialities that they are good at. It could be that Burke is the guy that you want to have in place when you are almost there. He's a guy that isn't afraid to take a risk if he believes the payout is winning a cup. Other GM's might be more risk adverse, which is what you probably want when you are rebuilding. Avoid the risk, stay the course, and develop your assets.
Significantly Insignificant said:
The hard part for me to accept is that Burke was capable of doing it "the right way" (for those that think it is the right way). He remains a good GM. I don't know if it was ego or what it was that allowed himself to accept the "re-tooling" scheme.
He underestimated how poor the UFA market would be which killed his re-tooling concept (and made some bad signings like Komisarek). Then he had little choice in 29th place but to have a fire sale and rebuild some. Now, he's treading water while the prospects he's acquired develop rather than putting more into the pipeline that he could use down the road.
It's messed up in my opinion and makes it far more difficult for him to have a parade.
I think MLSE would have listened to him when they hired him and accepted a more conservative direction. Burke going the re-tooling direction hurt his chances to be successful in Toronto in my opinion. This was not a situation like Anaheim where he had some elite guys already drafted/in the system.
L K
Active member
Just to add a bit to that (and I know he has added some guys that are kind of like prospects who have since played in the NHL), but his drafting hasn't really amounted to much at the NHL level at this point.
Kadri can't crack a mediocre lineup and no-one else is on the verge of doing so. The young guys on the roster:
Gunnarsson; Kulemin; Reimer are from the Ferguson Jr. drafts. And the guy we hear the most talk about being the next guy to come up is Holzer, who is again, a Ferguson draft pick.
We are in year 4 of the Burke era, which means he's had nearly 3 full seasons of his drafts and he can't get a guy into his lineup from that. Not that it means any of those guys are busts or not going to amount to something in the NHL, but this hasn't exactly been the best roster the last few years and to not have guys who are beating down the door to get on the roster is not all that encouraging.
Kadri can't crack a mediocre lineup and no-one else is on the verge of doing so. The young guys on the roster:
Gunnarsson; Kulemin; Reimer are from the Ferguson Jr. drafts. And the guy we hear the most talk about being the next guy to come up is Holzer, who is again, a Ferguson draft pick.
We are in year 4 of the Burke era, which means he's had nearly 3 full seasons of his drafts and he can't get a guy into his lineup from that. Not that it means any of those guys are busts or not going to amount to something in the NHL, but this hasn't exactly been the best roster the last few years and to not have guys who are beating down the door to get on the roster is not all that encouraging.
cw said:
This is a problem that every Toronto GM has had though. For a myriad of reasons, each GM thinks they can do it quickly in T.O. and it never works out. It's not only that they all think they can do it, it's also that none of them have learned from their predecessor.
J
Jalili
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bustaheims said:
Point taken, but you could say the same thing about planning for that elite 1st line center to become available, that ultimately you're setting yourself up for failure.
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