Fiasco
that's it.
It would probably be best to just stop there, for comedy and simplicity sake... a wise man once told me good writing is the most condensed version... i believe we were talking about poetry, and of course i had that saying once, that was kind of harsh and negative... it was "poetry is a jackass sport". The saying itself came to me while suffering an insipid poetry night, where the contestants were trying to "one up" each other in over descriptive, flowery word monologues drawing pictures i couldn't really see, and when i did see them they made me angry. Kind of like a pompous competition where everybody in the room is the loser and it just goes on forever... kind of like the Leafs season this year.
After an epic collapse in game 7, and then the following season where the "18 wheeler went off the cliff", there was hope that this season had to be better. The good news is that the leafs are drafting 4th, and then i think 26th. The other good news is that all of the scouts have been fired and Mark Hunter, an apparent scouting master is at the helm to rebuild the foundation of the drafting team.
Now there is a new coach, who comes with some excellent credentials: Mike Babcock is a trained sports psychologist and he has won a lot of things in his career. Indeed he took Team Canada to back to back Olympic gold medals... sure a team loaded in talent, as were the Red Wings when the won the Cup, but we have seen plenty of talent loaded teams underachieve and not play like a team.
In Toronto you probably need a sports psychologist running the team, because you know if they lose the first game of the season the Toronto media will be calling for heads and replaying and dissecting mistakes made by the players and questioning their commitment to the city, their team and the game in general.
Fragile is the word one would use to describe the Leaf team's confidence over the last few years, and rumors are that players don't want to come to Toronto to play. There is a saying in sports... there is always lots of room on the bandwagon... of course that's when things are going good. I would say that there is always lots of room under the bus in Toronto when things are going bad. They have this saying "he threw that player under the bus"... If a someone were to say "well a bad effort from this player cost them the game"... that would be throwing that player under the bus. In Toronto everybody is driving buses and there is like a big funnel in front of all of the buses trying to scoop up as many players to get under the bus. Angry arrogant experts, many with "little man syndrome" selling copy or airtime with their views on what's wrong and who is to blame and constantly speculating on who needs to go, and who needs to come to save the day. It's a whole other disease in itself, Toronto Maple Leaf-itus . So of course i was pleased to hear Coach Babcock say that he was going to work to make it "safe" to play here, which is a tall task, but it speaks of a real culture shift with respect to a rebuild. It appears also that the people running the show will be here to stay for the long haul, and they seem to be on the same page, and i would imagine they will bring in the people they want and have a real shot to build something.
The turnaround with respect to Leaf GM's, Coaches, Presidents... you name it has been far to rapid over the last decade. You can't build something and grow it if you keep replacing parts, mind you the parts they had didn't seem to be making things better. Perhaps knowing that the guillotine is set to come down on your head made people make foolish decisions to "speed the rebuild". We could list examples, but there is no point salting the wounds.
JK has been a solid addition to Leaf's Nation, even though Leaf's nation doesn't know about JK. It's coming up on half a decade that JK has been coming up with opposition team metaphor heckles, and this year when heckles weren't working JK thought perhaps it was the heckles that were not working and changed to haiku's to see if that could work. Given the considerable effort JK has made to the OMEN power one has to give JK some serious credit. I never mentioned the heckles or the haiku's over the past few years because i thought it might be bad luck... but perhaps that was the problem in the first place.
JK could be the greatest unsung Californian Leafs fan... read em and weep.
Way to San Jose?
Take 880, through that traffic.
Really not worth it.
that's it.
It would probably be best to just stop there, for comedy and simplicity sake... a wise man once told me good writing is the most condensed version... i believe we were talking about poetry, and of course i had that saying once, that was kind of harsh and negative... it was "poetry is a jackass sport". The saying itself came to me while suffering an insipid poetry night, where the contestants were trying to "one up" each other in over descriptive, flowery word monologues drawing pictures i couldn't really see, and when i did see them they made me angry. Kind of like a pompous competition where everybody in the room is the loser and it just goes on forever... kind of like the Leafs season this year.
After an epic collapse in game 7, and then the following season where the "18 wheeler went off the cliff", there was hope that this season had to be better. The good news is that the leafs are drafting 4th, and then i think 26th. The other good news is that all of the scouts have been fired and Mark Hunter, an apparent scouting master is at the helm to rebuild the foundation of the drafting team.
Now there is a new coach, who comes with some excellent credentials: Mike Babcock is a trained sports psychologist and he has won a lot of things in his career. Indeed he took Team Canada to back to back Olympic gold medals... sure a team loaded in talent, as were the Red Wings when the won the Cup, but we have seen plenty of talent loaded teams underachieve and not play like a team.
In Toronto you probably need a sports psychologist running the team, because you know if they lose the first game of the season the Toronto media will be calling for heads and replaying and dissecting mistakes made by the players and questioning their commitment to the city, their team and the game in general.
Fragile is the word one would use to describe the Leaf team's confidence over the last few years, and rumors are that players don't want to come to Toronto to play. There is a saying in sports... there is always lots of room on the bandwagon... of course that's when things are going good. I would say that there is always lots of room under the bus in Toronto when things are going bad. They have this saying "he threw that player under the bus"... If a someone were to say "well a bad effort from this player cost them the game"... that would be throwing that player under the bus. In Toronto everybody is driving buses and there is like a big funnel in front of all of the buses trying to scoop up as many players to get under the bus. Angry arrogant experts, many with "little man syndrome" selling copy or airtime with their views on what's wrong and who is to blame and constantly speculating on who needs to go, and who needs to come to save the day. It's a whole other disease in itself, Toronto Maple Leaf-itus . So of course i was pleased to hear Coach Babcock say that he was going to work to make it "safe" to play here, which is a tall task, but it speaks of a real culture shift with respect to a rebuild. It appears also that the people running the show will be here to stay for the long haul, and they seem to be on the same page, and i would imagine they will bring in the people they want and have a real shot to build something.
The turnaround with respect to Leaf GM's, Coaches, Presidents... you name it has been far to rapid over the last decade. You can't build something and grow it if you keep replacing parts, mind you the parts they had didn't seem to be making things better. Perhaps knowing that the guillotine is set to come down on your head made people make foolish decisions to "speed the rebuild". We could list examples, but there is no point salting the wounds.
JK has been a solid addition to Leaf's Nation, even though Leaf's nation doesn't know about JK. It's coming up on half a decade that JK has been coming up with opposition team metaphor heckles, and this year when heckles weren't working JK thought perhaps it was the heckles that were not working and changed to haiku's to see if that could work. Given the considerable effort JK has made to the OMEN power one has to give JK some serious credit. I never mentioned the heckles or the haiku's over the past few years because i thought it might be bad luck... but perhaps that was the problem in the first place.
JK could be the greatest unsung Californian Leafs fan... read em and weep.
Way to San Jose?
Take 880, through that traffic.
Really not worth it.
Kick them in the crown
jewels. Burn their castles down.
Revolt. Just some ideas.
Stuffed hawk for dinner,
should be the plan Leafs. Poultry
Tradition, X-MAS
Down the Flyers. Not
The planes I'm on today please.
The hockey team, Leafs.
In Dallas, the leaves
are still green. Thrive, Leafs in the
warm sun of north Texas.
now for a JFK haiku:
Ask not what you team can do for you but what you can do for your team
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