Turnabout is Fair Play, but...

If you caught the game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Florida Panthers on Tuesday night, you apparently bore witness to one of the worst non-calls in all of sports: history goalie interference on Cory Stillman as he deliberately steamrolled over goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere as teammate Dennis Wideman tied the game 1-1:

Just what was the referee doing at the time of this atrocity? Evidently he was on his knees, doing something rather unseemly to the game. I mean, clearly Stillman was looking for blood. I'm rather surprised he wasn't ejected after clearly viciously attacking Giguere with his skate like that. What is this world in which we're living coming to??? I ask you, what???

In all seriousness, the above play was used in part as an example as to why the Leafs' Colton Orr's third-period, game-winning goal was allowed. If you missed that one, here it is for your viewing pleasure:

In fact, Giguere had this to say following the game: "I thought they should have called mine. I'm sure they probably think that they should have called theirs. We're even."

The sheer difference in magnitudes of blatancy aside (along with Giguere's clear-cut brain damage after letting his nonsensical Conn Smythe Trophy-victory in 2003 go to his head) , the Wideman goal should have counted, while the Orr one shouldn't have, based on actual NHL rules, specifically rule 69:

Rule 69.1: "Goals should be disallowed only if: (1) an attacking player, either by his positioning or by contact, impairs the goalkeeper's ability to move freely within his crease or defend his goal; or (2) an attacking players initiates intentional or deliberate contact with a goalkeeper, inside or outside of his goal crease. Incidental contact with a goalkeeper will be permitted, and resulting goals allowed, when such contact is initiated outside of the goal crease, provided the attacking player has made a reasonable effort to avoid such contact. The rule will be enforced exclusively in accordance with the on-ice judgment of the Referee(s), and not by means of video replay or review."

That last bit is important, meaning referee Stephen Walkom couldn't have gone to video review to reveal his own idiocy even if he wanted to, but we'll get to that later on. Right now, it's more important to focus on the fact that Stillman was outside the crease when his skate touched Giguere's. It's also important to realize that Giguere was the one that bumped into Stillman and not the other way around. Finally, it's important to realize that if Stillman purposely put himself in a position to get nudged by Giguere with the sole intention of throwing him off his game, he's clearly earned his Screen Actors Guild membership for the next few years at least... that and Giguere has the mental toughness (and perhaps capacity) of an exhausted hamster just finishing up his daily workout in his wheel.

As for Orr, let's agree to disagree when you say: "I was trying to not make contact. I was just trying to get out to the front."

Far be it for me to try to get into the head of a professional hockey player, especially one I've never met personally, but if Orr was not trying to make contact with Clemmensen he at the very least must have been slightly confused and mistaken goalie Scott Clemmensen for one of those new hybrid goaltenders you can walk through. An easy-enough mistake to make, that. You're excused.

Really, at the end of the day, even without Orr's goal, the Leafs would have won 2-1 (although I really hate to play the would've, could've game). Phil Kessel did score late in the game to put it out of reach, and the Leafs won relatively fair and square. Orr was guilty of goaltender intereference, but more importantly he was guilty of trying to give his team a chance to win.

The onus falls on the referee to make the right call and he didn't. All ref Stephen Walkom told Clemmensen was that he thought he was out of the crease when he got hit, meaning he either misinterpreted the rule completely, needs glasses because he can't see two feet in front of him, or is just incompetent. As a referee who should know the rulebook inside and out, he failed at his job. But them's the breaks. The breaks went the Leafs' way last night. Just like the Leafs didn't get the breaks when they lost their first game of the season against the New York Islanders (although I equally maintain they lost that game fair and square), you get up, dust yourself off, and move on. That's all that can be done... except for groaning about how much the league is in love with the Leafs. That's always fun, too.

Maple Leafs Always Good for a Few Laughs

Torontonians have been positively pumped up in regard to the Maple Leafs’ chances this upcoming NHL season. That is until Tuesday night when, following a 5-0 defeat against the Ottawa Senators, any hope they might have had got deflated like a bad balloon animal made vulnerable to the countless pins and needles on which Toronto’s roster is now certainly walking.

I’m reminded of that car gag that has one clown after another exiting an undersized vehicle. You think to yourself there can’t possibly be one more in there, and, then, lo and behold... Substitute clowns for mistakes made on the ice and you have the Leafs game in a nutshell.

Sure, this is the pre-season, but the Leafs iced nine NHL regulars on Tuesday... 10 if you count supposed superstar-in-the-making Nazem Kadri, who ended the game much like most of his teammates, in the red in the +/- column. The Senators in contrast played just eight major leaguers, and that’s being somewhat generous to Jesse “Don’t Play Me if You Want to Win” Winchester.

Now, the boxscore doesn’t always tell the whole story, but when a 27-year-old with just 31 career points scores the game-winning goal against your team, set up by Roman Wick and Ryan Keller (who???) no less, you’ve got big problems. Probably more of an indication of just how bad the Leafs were: they had six power plays in the second period alone (to the Senators’ none), including a couple two-man advantages, and still couldn’t score on rookie goalie Robin Lehner.

Broken down, what that means is that on Tuesday night the Leafs wouldn’t have been able to hit the broad side of a barn blocked by just three cows and one lowly, scared-out-of-his-mind, mask-wearing calf that had essentially been sent out to be slaughtered for his veal. In other words, they sucked.

If you believe the (Toronto media’s) hype, the Leafs, who finished 29^th in the league last season, are supposed to be this much-improved squad. According to those media types, they have more depth. Someone should tell Toronto that when you’re starting at close to zero on the depth scale, almost anything constitutes an improvement. I mean, if they signed one of those cows right now, management would at least be able to offer Santa Claus some milk with their cookies come Christmas, at which point a decent hockey team will be atop most everyone’s lists once again.

This isn’t meant to detract from general manager Brian Burke’s efforts thus far. I actually think the Kessel deal was a good one and he really has improved the team, but nowhere near as much needed to make it playoff-bound. Just look at their projected top six of Kessel, Nikolai Kulemin, Tyler Bozak, Kris Versteeg, Mikhail Grabovski, and Colby Armstrong.

Forget that Armstrong and Versteeg would be third-liners on a good team, or that Grabovski was so far down the Montreal Canadiens depth chart once upon a time that not only was Kyle Chipchura ahead of him at the center position, but he was eventually traded for a mere second-round pick (and a throw-in prospect). Instead, look to Burke’s own words in discussing Kulemin, when the two sides were negotiating a contract earlier this summer:

“When the team stinks, (players) get ice-time they don’t deserve,” he told the Toronto Sun, clearly in truer words never before spoken. “We’re not going to pay a player money for situational ice time he gets by default.”

Kulemin eventually got $2.35 million per year, which is still arguably top-six money. Kessel, though, still remains the team’s only legitimate offensive forward. Admittedly, he and Bozak showed a lot of chemistry last year, but Bozak’s decent rookie season was clearly the by-product of him playing with Kessel than anything else. Needless to say, there’s a reason the term is “top-six” forwards and not “top one”. If you have a “top one”, you’re looking at a “top spot” in the draft, something that has also been taken away from the Leafs as well, along with their long-since-dissipated dignity which began to slowly fade sometime, oh, I don’t know, after 1967.

"It's such a relief to finally be a big fish in a small pond... What's that? The only fish?"

Meanwhile, in goal, Burke was able to acquire the over-the-hill Jean-Sebastien Giguere last year to mentor the up-and-coming Jonas Gustavsson. However, recent reports have surfaced that Giguere will be the number-one goalie this year meaning one of two things: either the Leafs aren’t as optimistic about Gustavsson’s long-term potential as they once were (that they’ve resorted to going with whatever second-hand trash washed up out of the Anaheim Ducks’ pond) or they’re thinking Gustavsson’s telltale heart murmur poses a very real threat.

And, finally, in regard to the Leafs strongest point, their defense, yes they do have eight NHL-calibre defensemen raring to go, but, of those eight, two are Jeff Finger and Brett Lebda, who are barely top-six material, and two others are Luke Schenn and Carl Gunnarsson, whose development is being sacrificed as likely little more than a propagandistic ploy to give the team’s fans something to cheer about, because there’s little else.

Instead, team management would do better to ice a bunch of clowns, because at least it’s their job to make the people laugh. When the Leafs do, it’s just sad. So, while the Leafs will no doubt be better than they were last season, there’s little cause for celebration, unless the circus suddenly rolls into town to take fans’ minds off what is certain to be another non-playoff year.