I just came across a real good Berger article which brings up insightful analysis about our home woes.  Who am I kidding, its complete garbage.

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Berger's latest blog is just plain awesome (don't worry, it's the Fan590 Link)

He ran down the possibilities and probabilities the Heroes are looking at a week before camp and 29 days before Denying the Habs forwards the chance of riding the Behemoth or Top Gun for obvious safety concerns.

*notes off the bat, I'm just taking a quick procrastinate, I have no time nor desire to make a post backed up by facts and bang on stats, just merely take a quick look at Berger.  He must have the letters 'MOY' on his bathroom mirror in the same place Rocky had Drago's picture in the fourth instalment because his determination is there.

What he says is basically:

10-20% [call it 15%] The chance of challenging for a playoff spot, contingent on:

• Vesa and Gustavbecome premier tandum
• Top 10 PK in the league
• Two prospects become scoring threats, list not including Stalberg, Stefanovic, or the ghost of Steen
• Beauchemin and Komisarek do well
• Shootout over .500
• home ice 15 games over .500

Johnny Thunder's notes:

15 games over 500 at home just to challenge for a spot!?  If we're 15 games over .500 I'd say we'd have to totally crumble in those hostile trips to Atlanta and Ottawa

Marginal improvement 60-80% [call it 70%]

• Steady goaltending
• PK top 20
• Grabbo maintains anti-kostytsin focus
• Blake at 30G
• Sophmores don't sag
• Bauch improves PP
• Discipline and creativity
• A ROY candidate [do I assume the 'challenge for playoff spot' has 2 ROYs needed?]
• Coach has room's ear
• Greater than .500 in shootouts
• 8th dman MVR can boost production from the press box... I mean back end

Thunder's notes:
ROY candidate is a pretty hopeful one, MVR is just chasing unicorns.  Overall, fine assessment

Leafs will stagnate: chances 50-60% [55%]

• Vesa is decent, gustav struggles
• OLAS regresses
• PK in top 25 in league
• Hanson, Boz and Tlusty aren't adequate
• Colton Orr is just a fighter (i guess he's banking on Orr not improving on his 5 points last year, or a dreaded 20% reduction in offensive output leaving him at 4)
• Blake under 20G
• Team plays best hockey after November when it stops mattering.

Johnny Thunder's Notes:

Stagnate is pretty much spot on, pretty much would leave us where we were last year

Leafs plummet chances 15-25% [20%]

• Goalies are brutal
• Undisciplined penatlies
• PK still bad
• Grabbo, Blake, TooLusty, and Poni are not consistent or only 1 is decent
• Hanson and Bozak in AHL
• Kaberle still falters
• Beauchemin proves every pundit wrong and turns out not to be good
• Komesarek bad
• Coach loses room
• Less than .500 on home ice
• Shootouts mostly lost
• Burke trades prospects

Johnny Thunder's Notes:
Oh dear Howard.

Overall:

Notes 15+70+55+20=100, everybody knows that, so Howie good to see you're in mid-season form.

I really don't think that making the playoffs is some insurmountable challenge for this team.  In all honesty i think the Heroes don't really need to be that much better than they were last year to make the playoffs.

There are teams that are a lock, and teams that are hopeless who we can address right off the bat..

Locks
NE--Boston

Atlantic--Pitt, Philly, NJ,

SE--Caro, Wash

I would think NYR gets in there too, just out of respect for making it in the last few years and benefit of the doubt, but if in there, they'd come with an asterik along with every one of Gregg Zaun's records.

Hopeless

NE--Ott, Buff

Atlantic-- NYI

SE--Tamp, FLA, ATL

Like the locks, MTL could possibly get in, which at least gives it hope, Florida could have salvaged something had they not let Jay Bo and Belak go for absolutely nothing.

Assuming there are 2 playoff spots left, the heroes are in there against...

NE--MTL*

Atlantic-  NYR

SE--nobody.

So 3 teams battling for 2 spots, one of which has a front line that can't go on all the rides at Wonderland, the other has Glen Sather paying Redden $6.5 or something (could be $5.5, either way) leaving them with no cap flex, and still have Sean Avery. 

So assuming Howie's 'Challenging for a Playoff Spot' means challenge for a playoff spot, he's pegging us in there at a 15% chance that we'll be better than Ottawa, Buff, NYI, Tamp, FLA,and ATL.  Thanks Howie, you're great.

Furthermore, based on this, I don't think 'Stagnate' and 'Challenge for a playoff spot' are all that different.  The teams that got better in the East we don't compete with, meaning Philly getting Pronger doesn't effect us, b/c they would have a spot in the playoffs either way.  Tanguay to Tampa doesn't effect us, b/c they're back end is anchored by an 18 year old with mike smith still unproven.  Buffalo could challenge for a playoff spot now that i think of it.  But the overall point is that teams like MTL and NYR have taken a step back, making our improve from the back end plan, slow and steady and what not, could be enough to not blow the doors off the league, but still at very least 'contend for a spot'. 

Too lazy to read it over or I'd correct the Buffalo flip flop I did at the end.

What are your thoughts? Go Flyers!

Without a Thursday game to spill ink over, and not to be out done by Berger, Cox stepped in with this gem:

"As Whalers GM in '93, he acquired Sergei Makarov from Calgary for a fourth-round selection six days before the draft, then peddled Makarov to San Jose along with the sixth overall selection, a second rounder and a third rounder for the No.2 pick, knowing all along Ottawa was married to Alexandre Daigle as the top pick.

In '99, he did three separate deals with Tampa Bay, Chicago and Atlanta to get Daniel and Henrik Sedin.

Armed with the No.3 pick going in, he dealt Bryan McCabe and a 2000 first rounder to Chicago for the No.4 selection, sent the fourth overall pick and two thirds to Tampa Bay for the No.1 pick, then moved backwards one slot by trading the top pick to Atlanta for the No.2 pick and a third rounder, plus a promise from the Thrashers they would take Patrik Stefan.

Daigle and Stefan. That's two nasty cow patties missed."

So to recap: Burke trades a 4th, 6th, 2nd,and 3rd rounder for the 2 overall pick, and then McCabe a 1st, 2 3rds for a Sedin and a 2nd.  All I have to say is dam, it’s a good thing Fletcher moved up to the number 5 spot to take Schenn last year, otherwise I’m sure Cox would have criticized  not making the move relentlessly. 

Editor's Note: Johnny Thunder returns with another skewering of the latest in a long string of ridiculous Howard Berger posts.

TORONTO (Mar. 26) — So, now it all makes sense. In the end, the Maple Leafs, unlike 29 other teams in this league is in the business of providing quality entertainment to their fans.  Yes, it’s about the sheep.

"To be honest, our late-season push here has been very timely — moreso than in other years," a member of the Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment cadre ($5 every time you read that word) told me. "In our tough economic times, we needed something to give our season-ticket holders a boost, and our play recently has served that purpose. The renewals are going to be just fine, even with the [3.5%] price hike. Our fans like what they are seeing on the ice."  Typical of a fan hating franchise to associate their product value with W/L column outputs.   

What a shock. Long before the eulogy is delivered, sometime between November and March, when the games stopped mattering on a fourth consecutive season with no playoffs, the denizens of Leafs Nation are stampeding to their mail-boxes, cheques in-hand to renew their chances to see 41 games of the finest entertainment product in town (unless this guy is wrong, if so, get the popcorn). The late-season, no-pressure, prove I’m committed to this team, and not a Martin Gelinas or Miroslov Satan, of tomorrow hot streak — a staple of the Blue & White since the lockout — has done the trick once again. In Detroit, a post apocalyptic 4 sport town in ruins, the defending Stanley Cup champions are not a guaranteed sell-out this season. Here in T.O., with nothing to commemorate since Lester Pearson was prime minister of Canada, the sheep are flocking (Goddam man, those flying sheep will kill us all!)… unconditionally.

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Not all heroes wear masks and capes.

Super powers have given our heroes the edge time and time again to defend the very freedom and justice that we stand for.  But like all things in life, there needs to be balance.  For every Wolverine or Spiderman there needs to be a Bo Jackson and his natural power to uproot trees and invisibility [He can see the Mitchell report, but the Mitchell report can't see him], or the Green Lantern, whose persistent and regimented approach to archery made him a stalwart on the point for the Avengers.  It's the everyday heroes that remind us that it doesn't take the flash of a Bat Signal to make a difference.

Everyday heroes are important because sometimes our heroes get sloppy.  In the world of the B'sphere, we have the Daredevil's Advocate, whose ambulance chaser-like determination for facts is unmatched by any conventional unbiased reporting standards and gives him the edge time and time again.  Mr. Fantastic Steve Simmons can reach around any obstacle to turn a low ERA into a resume taint [cox bloc, get your article history in order] while The Invisible Woman Richie Griffin who can erase a bad start per month to make the case for any Cy Young candidate. 

Our heroes got sloppy today.  Both the Star and Post had nice feel good articles about Jason Blake and how he's found his stride blah blah blah.  Yes, Blake is playing well for the Leafs but let's not all go out and buy the jersey for heaven's sake.  His albatross of a contract led my buddies and I to create the 'Blake Line' , which says a girl is legit so long as she graduates university before 2012, when Blake's contract is done'.  Its the Mendoza line of age requirements. 

This is a time where the Mittenstringers need a counteracting force.  I'm looking at you Xenia Onnotop and your no nonsense approach to nonsense journalism will surely remind us that Blake has cancer or else we might actually feel content to have him.  Maybe you'll embarrass the nation on the way or maybe not but either way I know something is brewing.  Time will tell.  Xenia doesn't have the flash of a Daredevil's Advocate or the Invisible Woman Richard Griffin's ability to erase games but she can seduce her way into any scoop to undo both of today's pro-Blake articles with a few short pen strokes. 

This is why Toronto needs the city's unsung Mittenstringer: Rosie Di Manno.

JT 8

Glad to hear the 2011 World Cup of Hockey is apparently on.

Not really.  The highest level of hockey played with NHL rules is the last thing anyone following the game would want.

Remember the 2004 World Cup? Yep, Cousin Vinnie’s goal in the semi’s to win, that was held right before the NHL and NHLPA went to war and ultimately wrecked the entire 2004-05 season. The funds raised from the ’04 World Cup helped the two sides wage labour war, and thus those fans who supported the tournament [excluding print media] actually ended up feeding the fight that deprived them of the sport for a year.  Had it not been for fans of hockey, it should be noted, the players and owners could never have made next months rent, forcing both sides to concede, and play a full season.  Good going fans.   Once again, it was your fault that the 04-05 season didn’t exist.

Now they’re talking about a 2011 tournament, which would take place – you guessed it – right before the current CBA expires, assuming the players do as everyone expects and don’t re-open the arrangement beforehand.  

Already, both sides are girding for another protracted fight, and so are more than willing to stage another World Cup to raise funds for that very purpose.  Fans will once again be able to ruin Christmas for everyone by passionately cheering for our heroes.  The players are growing increasingly unhappy with giving back chunks of money in escrow funds every year, while the owners are already talking about another rollback in salaries, and you can bet some among the NHL ranks will be looking to kill guaranteed contracts.

So why would any hockey fan help these people kill off another season by supporting the 2011 World Cup?  

It’s an international event that really only means something in Canada – sort of like the world juniors – and one that has no predictability in terms of when it will pop up on the hockey landscape. It’s the bastard child of the old Canada Cup, and an event that’s nowhere near as meaningful as the Olympics.  People never cared about the Canada Cup, when is the last time you’ve seen the Gretzky to Lemieux goal?  The ’76 team being the greatest hockey team assembled meant nothing in this tournament.   No commie ever worships Tretiak or the KLM line.  Pride in sport only exists in Canada, everyone with half a hockey mind knows this.  It was this very pride that killed the season, not the players or owners. 

So who would be excited about another World Cup featuring the best hockey on the planet in our own back yard. Not me,  I'm just going to  pout and listen to my Dallas Green albums and wonder why the popular kids don't like me because I eat dirt in recess.  I just want to be sad for a while. 

JT 7

Editor's Note: What happens when you take Working Class Howard's idiotic ramblings to the extreme? What about when you are reminded of his previous stances on issues? Well, whatever you get, it comes out pretty funny in this fanpost.

TORONTO (Jan. 7) – To my astonishment, fans that routinely and unconditionally fill the Air Canada Centre for Maple Leaf games haven’t been quite as sheep-like so far this season. Oh, they’ll show up to capacity in any situation, children in hospital or not, but such is the nature of the Blue & White – widely unanticipated by my insight light analysis – has made for a lively audience most nights, even when the video-board above centre-ice isn’t imploring the denizens to “make noise”.  Yes, it is only in this overly hockey crazed city that we find such sheep like fans drawn to lively entertainment while, I should repeat, children are dying in hospitals.

The crowd for last night’s game against Florida, however, was a throwback in every sense of the word. The sheep from previous years, who still haven’t given up on this team after 41 years and continue to cheer for the home team, were in evidence all through the arena. It was considered fashionable to boo Bryan McCabe on his return to the ACC; after all, what former Leaf defensemen played his way to 5th on the depth charts with an albatross of a contract, refused to waive his NMC and suggested he’ll get booed on Monday. So, without fail, this collection of banality [I used a thesaurus to find this word] followed through and jeered a player that largely contributed to seasons in which the Leafs compiled 103, 100 and 98 points, seasons that I’ve always said truly mattered.  It should also be noted however, that those seasons were still absolute failures, much like everything the team does, so why is it that these sheepish fans don’t applaud him is beyond me.  Of course, there wasn’t a chirp of discontent aimed at the lazy, unmotivated, over performing members of the current team while Florida effortlessly recorded the game’s first 11 shots on goal. Not until the buzzer sounded to end the second period – with the Panthers easily in front, 3-0 – did the flock briefly turn its attention away from McCabe and towards the lethargic heroes in blue and boo their favourite team for their inability to be half decent night in and night out without any top talent to help.

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 Editor's Note: Johnny Thunder delivers another withering riposte to the latest issue of The Spin. He exposes the hypocrisy and shatters the illusion still held in some simpleton circles that The Omen has any idea of what he's written even 2 lines before.

A Constantly Moving Target

You have an imaginary second NHL team in Toronto that some believe now can have a price tag attached. Surely, pretend journalists are on the way.

You have Mats Sundin's newly sold Toronto home which surely belongs in the realm of the imaginary for most of us. Why a bachelor needs eight bathrooms certainly strains the imagination.  Surely he could have found a quaint Forest Hill mansion with one or two bathrooms while still having enough living space to bring his family from across the world over for the odd extended stay but that’s just not how hockey in this town is played.  Since 1967 it's been more of the same old same old, rich people end up buying rich houses.  I’m sure movie stars in Beverly Hills take a more bathroom per ass approach when designing a mansion, but sadly, not the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Kool Aid drinking architects who build mansions in this town.  Which clearly ties in perfectly to the point I’m trying to make: players are responsible for getting hit from behind.  

You have the NHL justice system, always an ever-changing dynamic, requiring new levels of imagination from those who mete out hockey justice and from those trying to understand that justice.

There's always room for a new precedent, it seems. Chris Simon gets 25 games pretty much out of the blue after two handing Ryan Hollwig in the face last year. Mark Bell gets 15 games based on no particular case law, aside from a DUI hit and run, resulting in jail time and poor PR for the league and players. 

Now you have a three-game ban handed down to Montreal's Tom Kostopoulos for checking Maple Leaf defenseman Mike Van Ryn from behind in game Saturday night, leaving Van Ryn seriously injured, but really, does anyone call a broken nose, hand, and concussion serious enough for me not to blame him for it later the article?

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A Good Play Gone Bad

Unless you want to follow the rules, there's not much that could have been changed about the hit from behind on Mike Van Ryn on Saturday night.

Van Ryn was doing his job, trying to make the toughest, most courageous play in the game, which is hustling back to get the puck in your own zone knowing you're going to get drilled into the end boards.

Don't tell me about the "tough guys" of the games, the guys who scrap, the guys who will take a million punches to the face to ensure Gretzky doesn’t get sneezed on once. Tell me about the Van Ryns who make that play night after night. Those are the tough guys. Those are the players you need more of to make a tough hockey team.  Van Ryn’s C grade in the Cox Alphabet of Defensive Merit is exactly the guys who you build teams around. 

So Van Ryn was making the right play. So too was Tom Kostopoulos, a 29-year-old winger from Mississauga who isn't in the league to be fancy and score but to skate hard, leave his feet to finish his check,  and to wipe the unsightly smudge off the name crest of Van Ryns jersey, at top speed.

His job was to try to force Van Ryn to turn over the puck, and then create an offensive chance for his team by either motivating Van Ryn not to make the right play or by breaking his hand, nose, and lend him a concussion. The one option he doesn't have if he wants to continue making $900,000 a season in the NHL as a semi-skilled laborer is to pull up and not hit Van Ryn.  If he were a player that made say, 7 figures, then he has the option to cater to the safety of the game, and preserve the respect amongst players in the league.  Leaving an opponents health half right, however is not an option for semi skilled players.

So you had a veteran NHLer trying to do the right thing, and another playing within his tax bracket dictated ethics rules, hockey camps everywhere teach this.  At the last moment, Van Ryn spun back, again trying to make the right play by playing the puck but avoiding the hit. Kostopoulos left his feet with his arms extending, and the result was serious injury to the Leaf defenseman and a major and game misconduct for the Montreal forward.

No intent to injure. Just a semi skilled labourer wanting to earn his pay, delivering a dangerous hit, gone way bad.

So no, Kostopoulos doesn't deserve a suspension, although the nature of the hit mandated his expulsion from the match, he deserves to be heralded as a grinder god for his work. He probably will get at least one game off, however, for making that play in a nationally televised Montreal-Toronto game with the entire hockey world watching. If it happens in Nashville in a game between the Predators and Blue Jackets, we probably never hear about it, I for one, can guarantee that my spotty journalism wouldn’t have picked it up.

But he doesn't deserve a suspension.

Now if you want to follow the rules, that's another thing. If you want to make a rule that says a guy can’t leave his feet and shove another players upper back, forcing his head into the most dangerous of positions, then you might avoid that kind of play in the future, or penalized that player 5, plus a game, plus potential supplementary discipline. 

Otherwise, it's going to happen in this sport of high-speed, violent collisions. But this wasn't dirty, it was just the nature of 900k salaries. This wasn't Cam Janssen hitting Tomas Kaberle five Mississippis after the puck was gone or repeat offender Ryan Hollweg hammering an opponent from behind for the zillionth time, this was a player hitting another player from behind, arms high, feet fly, in other words, a good hit gone wrong. 

But others will differ, and some will suggest the play never would have happened if the Leafs had a goon in their lineup. Those people you'll never convince of anything, and the presence of Georges Laraque didn't stop the Leafs from going hard after the puck in hockey plays near Carey Price on three separate occasions on Saturday night.  Nor would the threat of an angry Wendel Clark totally obliterating even the hall of fame habs in attendance, have stopped the play on Schenn.  [Schenn earned a ‘Raw’ grade on the Alphabet of Defensive Merit last week.  Uncooked is likely the equivalent of ‘Jump Again’ on the infamous Jump to Conclusions mat.]

The unfortunate thing for Van Ryn is that after missing time last year with wrist problems, his game was coming to together nicely in Toronto [meriting a C grade mentioned last week], and then this happens. Game's just not fair sometimes, has anyone reading this ever played to confirm?