D'oh!-chenski

Relax. It's only preseason.

Never mind that, in two meaningless games, the Senators outscored the Leafs 12-6.

Ignore the memory of Wade Belak Carlo Colaiacovo lining up Dany Heatley and connecting with nothing but the boards, or Mikael Tellqvist down on his knees, fishing another one out of the net, or Kyle Wellwood, the kid who figures he has no chance of making the squad, scoring another goal. Heatley, Jason Spezza, Bochenski -- flashes in the pan, a line of Mr. Septembers.

Consider instead, the words of hockey sage Ken Campbell:

"With 10 days to go until the season opener and with the Leafs facing the Senators in two of their first three games, the Leafs are sliding into on-ice disarray."

Look on the bright side of it, says Pat Quinn:

"We have a lot of work to do to look anything like a team. We don't right now."

Feeling better? Me too. I love it when we can have these talks. Take it away, Spencer.

---

Yikes. Should we start with the good news, then? We tried to find something bad to say about the Senators this morning -- pretty tough right now thanks to all those 'meaningless' games. They probably don't miss him, but St. Louis is thinking Ottawa's loss is their gain. (thanks St. Louis Post-Dispatch for the nice memories):

The second period began and Patrick Lalime found himself on the Ottawa bench. Three goals on 11 shots in Game 7 of a first-round playoff series against Toronto had ended Lalime's night, and, as most knew at the time, his days with the Senators.

But we don't want to live in the past. Take a deep breath Leaf Nation, you're not the only fans north of the border with big sweat stains under their arms this morning. But just 'cause we're in panic mode, what would you have to say if the Leafs held a town hall meeting?

Around the league: Joe Nieuwendyk is skating on the Panthers top line.

The Great One shares his coaching philosophy.

"We've got to become a hard team to play against. None of this easy team to play against, 40 shots a game. That's just not going to work. And that's the reputation this team has, and that's what we're going to eliminate."

Calgary Flames, 2004-05 Stanley Cup champions.

Brian Leetch isn't looking forward to his return to Madison Square Garden. Could it have something to do with the way he left New York?

"They called me up and said, 'You're traded,' '' Leetch tells the Boston Herald. "That was it. There was no talk one way or the other."

Alex Mogilny's musings will be missed in these parts. Today, his simple take on the smaller equipment for puckstoppers:

"I don't think you're going to see a lot more goals because of (goalies') smaller pads. The pads are lighter, so the goalies are quicker."

Dan Blackburn, we were really cheering for him, has retired.

Junior report: Robbie Schremp, Dion Phaneuf.

Finally, from the Todd Bertuzzi department, Derian Hatcher's 2004 suspension will carry over into this season.

Comments

[denial]

oh okay, i'll post. it's not like you have to drag it outta me.

Hello Spencer.

For the 1 or 2 people that are growing familiar with what seems like my anti-leaf postion, rest assured: i'm not going to join in the chorus of writing off the leafs because of poor preseason performance. actually, if the leafs were breezing through these games, winning 5-0 or 7-1 and the city was already mapping out the parade route for next june (yeah, june), i'd be VERY concerned.

though i may be too analytical for my own good about this, i am very glad to see that the leafs are doing awful in the preseason. for the leafs to succeed this year, they will have to play on the edge of panic for the entire year. they don't have to play "playoff hockey" for 82 games -- you'll see popped adrenaline glands all over the ice by January -- but the leafs HAVE to play like a team that realizes that it will not be able to outskate, outshoot, outcheck, and on some occasion, out-goaltend the opponents. the leafs will have to tap into the 1 thing that the leafs have that no other team has to rely upon, not even montreal with their wannabe soccer fans (by the way, that chanting that you do at the molson centre is embarassing, you know, you seem very removed from the game and quite silly to the rest of us who don't go to hockey games to sing).

for the leafs to win, they have to outLEAF the other teams. Believe it or not, but there is still some strange mystique in being a maple leaf. there are still enough players in the league who grew up with the concept that toronto was the capital of the hockey world; it's like new york for baseball. and you know that 10 years from now if the yanks start to tank, there will still be a shiver through the spine of any starting pitcher who faces those pinstripes, either home or away. same goes for players playing the leafs.

quinn has to do precisely what gretzky is going to try (and probably fail) to do in pheonix. if he wants to follow a success story, quinn should look northwest to calgary. sutter re-branded that team and started by FORCING the players to realize that home ice advantage meant something. sutter walked into that job with the primary goal of retaking whatever they call the Saddledome this month. The same has to go for the quinn and the leafs. it is their only chance. There has to be something bigger than the sum total of the players on the ice in order for this team to surprise us all -- because, quite frankly, there is NOT enough on the ice to win. ottawa has an immense talent advantage is every position, including coaching, ownership, management, and farm system.

if the leafs lose this year, okay, that's life, we're used to it. but let them lose like a hard playing toronto team, and not a bunch of primadonnas who have actually nothing to primadonna about. they have more than their little hockey card stats to defend, they have a brand to protect -- and it'll be up to quinn to reward the players who understand that, and PUNISH those who don't.

elsewhere in my fractured mind:

steve sullivan was a great leaf. Nashville is going to be the surprise team in the west this year. in the east, watch out for the bruins. the energy flowing from the sox and the patriots have given new england fans something that they haven't had in a generation: a sense of entitlement. they're going to have a great home record.

[Chris Corrigan]

Denial is right...the Leafs have rarely played like a team in the few years under Quinn's watch. When I stack them up against New Jersey, Calgary, the Anaheim of 2002 and others, you see that the "team" element, the chemistry, seems to be missing. What appears in it's stead is the heart and the LEAFness, denial has fingered here. You saw it in the 2001 series against Ottawa (in fact in all of the Ottawa playoff defeats...)

I think the Leafs can count on that, but I'd love to see them gel more. I have long thought that chemistry was the missing ingredient from the more recent versions of the team.

(By the way, denial, I don't think you get there from forcing and coercing the team together...I think you do it by building quickly on those parts of team play that make sense...the taste of success is the fastest way to guarantee more of the same...Gretz will discover that in due course)

[biffspiff]

Just a quick note here:

Regarding you comments on Belak's missed hit on Heatley in last night's Sens-Leafs game. You obviously were listening to the colour commentary by Harry Neale who mistakenly stated at least twice (once, even after they had shown the replay) that it was Belak who missed the hit on Heatley (leading to a goal) - when in fact it was Coliacavo who missed the check. It was bad enough hearing Neale miss the call, now we have the error repeated in print...

[cy]

Biff, you are correct Sir. I just spoke with Ken Campbell and he confirms your information. I got caught listening to Harry, shame on me. Colaiacovo had a rough night, didn't he? So did that kid Wozniewski.

[Peter James]

As a Flames fan I feel I must point out Calgary also won the Stanley Cup in the Canadian Press' simulated season. An omen of things to come?

[denial]

hi chris corrigan (and the other chris.. and flimflam... hmmm...feels like romper room in here).

re: your point about not forcing a team together. yes, point taken and i agree completely. when i said 'forcing' a team, i didn't mean it at gunpoint or at mike keenan-point (not that there's much difference). I meant 'forcing' as being clear, consistent, and progressive. quinn has a bad reputation for punishing players for reasons that the rest of us find mind boggling. quinn is old school hockey; it's a old boys club, really. that club has kept him employed for decades, and naturally, he perpetuates it through his own team. the problem with that, is that quinn has struggled to deal with talented players who didn't fit into the quinn mold. players like travis green, who didn't appreciate having to give up ice time for players who were performing less and working less. so now green is in boston, and he's going to continue flourishing -- the 'new rules' were made for players like him. quick, smart, edgy, yet tough as hell and able to dish it out in the corners. losing green was a failure of the leaf system.

for quinn to turn the corner for this team, he has to step outside himself and get rid of this quinn mold - because it doesn't work. gretzky could coach here for sure, that would be great. too bad he's stuck coaching hull. coaching brett hull is about as rewarding as coaching malcolm in the middle. it's not going to end well.

and while i'm here -- cy, i know this isn't the all-sports blog, but i'm too lazy to go into there right now. quick NFL mention that has nothing to do with the game...

i expect almost nothing from football announcers, and even less from american football announcers. but listening to the decomposition of john madden is bordering on a kind of violence. verbatim (or as best as i can remember), here is what he said around the 3rd quarter of tonight's game, as the camera honed in on mike shanahan:

"there's mike shanahan...mike shanahan...you know mike shanahan, people are saying that he should go or doesn't belong anymore..but.. mike shanahan... he's like..mike shanahan and...I'm telling you....mike...shanahan is one of the top two three coaches in this league..."

And then Michaels bolts in whenever he can, oblivious to anything that madden is saying (so that would make both of them), trying so desperately to sound like a football insider.

Note to NFL: joe buck is the best announcer in the history of your game. replicate him. have him run training schools.

my God.

"shanhan...shanahan...good...shanahan........wapner...wapner..."