The grim truth about the Leafs

  For Brian Burke, the result of Saturday’s game should trouble him more than anything else that’s happened to the winless Toronto Maple Leafs this season.

  In fact, the Leaf general manager should be completely spooked by what he saw against the Vancouver Canucks.

  Yes, the Leafs played well. They hustled and outplayed the Canucks.

  Hockey Night in Canada’s Don Cherry said they put together “a great game.”

  According to Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun, it was the best effort of the season.

  But that, of course, is the problem: The Leafs played well and still couldn’t win.

  Cherry and also Simmons, on TSN’s The Reporters, talked about Canucks goalie Roberto Luongo stealing the game.

  Mike Farber of Sports Illustrated, responding to Simmons, grumbled about the “the hot goalie theory.”

   It was a valid point.

  When you’re evaluating a bad, no-talent team, which is what the Leafs are, you can always come up with a theory or an explanation.

  In addition to the hot goalie theory, they include:

 The players took some bad penalties. There might have been a bad call. They couldn’t get the power play going. No luck. Just couldn’t buy a goal.

   But the flip side of the argument is:

 The goalie looked great because the shooters weren’t very good.

   Penalties were taken because the players couldn’t compete without fouling.

  And the power play was hopeless because the team doesn’t have any offensive talent.

  Most of the talk in Toronto over the past three weeks has been about the Leafs’ weak goaltending and porous defense.

  But, the forward position is just as big a problem. They’re a hopeless group and that was mediocre last season even with Jason Blake and Matt Stajan over-achieving, and Dominic Moore playing pretty well.

   Consider what Burke did with the forwards. He refused to re-sign Moore or Nik Andropov, who has some offensive skills. And he brought in Wayne Primeau and Rickard Wallin, both of whom are basically useless.

   The Leafs will get an occasional victory this season. They’ll put together a good effort, and the opposing team will mail it in.

   When the rookie Jonas Gustavsson gets healthy — he’s expected to start tonight against Anaheim Ducks — he could make a bit of a difference.

  Phil Kessel will score some goals when gets into the lineup, but don’t count on a lot of production from him given the caliber of forwards he will be working with.

  The guess here is Toronto will win between 25 and 30 games. That will give them a lottery pick, perhaps No.1, which will go to the Boston Bruins as part of the Kessel trade.

   And Burke will continue scramble to sign free agents.

   That’s no way to build a championship team.

CTV getting torched

  The media continues to roast Vancouver Olympic TV rights holder CTV over its decision to have 27 of its broadcasters and journalists carry the Olympic torch during the relay across Canada.

  It’s a marketing move than has gone badly wrong for CTV. In addition to bad publicity, the network has placed its journalists in a conflict of interest, particularly those who will be reporting and commentating for CTV at the Games.

   This morning, Q107 Toronto morning host John Derringer hammered CTV and its “gang of 27.” He said Ben Mulroney and Tanya Kim carrying the torch instead of a former athlete ran counter to the Olympic spirit.
    He made jokes about Ken Shaw and Christine Bentley, two middle-aged news anchors at CFTO in Toronto, carrying the torch.

  He also mentioned The Globe and Mail’s Stephen Brunt, another carrier of the flame. Derringer said he respected Brunt, but felt he needed to ask himself what he was thinking when he agreed to carry the torch.

   The Toronto Sun and Toronto Star have published editorials criticizing the CTV decision.

   Randy Starkman, the Star’s amateur sports writer, wrote a good column about it, but we would quibble with one point. He stated that it was appropriate for CTV’s prime time Olympic anchor Brian Williams to be a torchbearer, because “[t]he guy’s been the face of Olympic TV coverage forever.”

  A few lines later, he stated, “No journalist should carry the torch.”

  But,  Williams is a journalist, one of the best broadcast journalists to work in Canadian sport. That’s why he, above all, should not have been placed in a position in which his credibility is compromised.