Writing some MUCH NEEDED GRIT

This is getting out of hand. Yesterday I found myself saying that adding some extra pepper to my sandwich was an underrated move, one that would slide under the radar, but that it would add some MUCH NEEDED GRIT.

I find a lot of the analysis towards the Leafs' situation kind of frustrating. Just an outright advocation of tanking the rest of the season to get a slight higher draft pick is so wrong, even if it seems to make sense. My understanding of this year's entry draft is that there's three top players, Steve Stamkos, Drew Doughty and Alex Pietrangelo. After that, it's considered a very "deep" draft, which means the same as it does every year: total crapshoot. They only have one first round pick, their own, and should they finish the season where they are now that pick would be in the top 5. The bottom five teams enter into a weighted draft lottery to determine who gets what pick, a measure put in place to prevent teams from deliberately tanking games at the end of the year. Basically, they already have a shot at getting one of these three players with the team they have now, right?

The Leafs' pick is already pretty bad, or good I suppose. I tend to think it'll get better (or worse) since the Leafs, who can't keep the puck out of their net anyways (5th most goals allowed, 5th highest goals-against average, 3rd worst penalty killing), just traded away a stay-at-home defenseman (Hal Gill) and a decent checker (Chad Kilger). Yeah I know, not big names, but they'll be replaced by whomever from their farm team who won't be as good and will make this team worse. This is fine, it's what rebuilding is all about and giving playing time to prospects at this point is exactly what they should be doing. I guess my point is, if your team is already bad enough to linger around the bottom of the league, how much worse do you want to make it?

This is the problem when you talk about rebuilding; EVERYBODY suddenly seems expendable because they all look like they're part of the problem. It's hard not to get caught up in it, I'm guilty of it too. The reality is that there isn't that much separating bad teams from good ones so a total explosion is rarely necessary. It's also unduly painful to watch. You'll win with Kaberle and McCabe going forward, they're still pretty good players and will be for a while. Tucker's $3 million salary isn't bogging down the team, Sundin is your very best and most valuable player, and Pavel Kubina can be traded during the off-season, according to his contract. There's lots of time to accumulate more draft picks this year. Sure, it would have been nice to get a Marian Hossa-type haul for Mats Sundin, but that was never going to happen. As a result, out of frustration the talk shifted to proposing trades for Nik Antropov, Alex Ponikarovsky, and Alex Steen. Those are PART of the rebuilding process, not blockages to it. Does anybody in the Toronto media remember what happened to Brad Boyes, Alyn McCauley, Steve Sullivan, Jason Smith, etc? Good thing Cliff Fletcher does.

The only players this team should have been looking to trade are Kubina, Andrew Raycroft, and Jason Blake. Kubina has underachieved and is hurt all the time, Toskala looks like the number one guy now and Justin Pogge is coming up as the Next Big Leaf Goalie. I thought the Blake signing was a good pickup, but too much and for too many years. He's 34 already and 40 goals last year was a pretty obvious aberration when compared with the rest of his career. Rebuilding just means shedding the age and salary problems, not burning all the assets. Remember, you're the Leafs, for some reason everyone wants to play for you. Just clear some cap space (that same cap that keeps going up, easing your salary cap problems year-by-year) and make room for the incoming flood. There aren't too many teams who need a total rebuild and those that do probably need them from inside management and upwards. Oh, wait...