End of season interview with Brian Burke

Brian Burke does not sugarcoat his words when asked about the season.

"It's a failure," he says, as we sit inside a circular booth at e11even, the MLSE-owned bistro on York Street. "You don't make the playoffs, it's a failure. There can be no debate in our sport about that.

"There are a lot of positives. But, overall, it's a failure. The season is a failure."

He pronounces "failure" with such staccato force, my first follow-up is: "So what went wrong?

"You have to win games in months that end with 'r,'" he says. "You can't just win games in months that end with a 'y.' October, November, December – those are critical months for us and we did not produce."

The two biggest "culprits," to use his word, were special teams and goaltending.

"But I think the goaltending, obviously, once that solidified, we've had a marvelous record. But our special teams need to improve."

As of today, the Leafs power play is operating at 16.2 per cent, which ranks 21st in the league. Penalty killing, meanwhile, is 77.9 per cent, which ranks 27th.

Why are special teams still so anemic when the roster was revamped over the past two seasons? Could the problem, at least in part, be related to strategic deficiencies?

There is a pause and a familiar scowl.

"I think the easiest thing to do when your special teams struggle is point to the coaches," says Burke. "That's what everyone says, 'Oh, it's coaching.' And yet the Pittsburgh Penguins have not had a Top 5 power play – not even Top 10, I think – in the last two years. So it can't be just personnel. It can't be just coaching. It's a blend."

He shakes his head and glances out the window behind me.

"This has gone beyond discussion. We've got to sort out our special teams. We've got to be better, there's no two ways about it. If our special teams had operated at a better efficiency rate, we'd be in the playoffs."

Okay. Forget the past. What is the plan for this summer? What "missing pieces," a cryptic term that gets tossed around almost daily, sit high atop his list?

"We intend to be active in free agency and we intend to explore trades."

Meaning what, specifically?

"We need to upgrade at center and we need some size," Burke says. "Size. I'd like to have more bite. I think Mike Brown delivered everything we asked him to. I think Colby Armstrong was exactly what we thought we were getting.

"But I think we need some more bite."

With the exception of Joffrey Lupul and Nikolai Kulemin, Burke says, the Top 6 is too small. In fact: "Even our Bottom 6 is small to play the way I like to play."

Leaving truculence aside, I return to the center position and ask if he regrets not getting a top-line player to feed Phil Kessel.

"Do I regret not getting a center? I haven't been offered one at a price that makes sense. I can overpay and get a center. Would I like to have one? Yes. That's different than do I regret not getting one."

The real issue, he says, has been negotiating power.

"What did we have to give up before this spring? We had no firsts. We had no Joe Colborne, no Jake Gardiner. What did we have to offer teams? I could have traded Kulemin for a center. But then we lose a Top 6 forward."

We move to the draft. The Leafs now have two firsts (Boston and Philadelphia) and one second round pick.

"We want to pick at least twice," says Burke. "So if we can package two of those picks to move up, we would do it. But we're not going to package three of them to move up. We want to pick twice."

Burke has engineered some high-profile deals on trade days past, including in 1993 when he moved up to snag Chris Pronger and 1999, when he landed the Sedin twins.

But as he notes ruefully: "Those were six years apart and I haven't got close since."

What about early scouting reports that suggest this isn't a strong draft year?

"It's not a marquee draft year," corrects Burke. "There's no Ovechkin. The year we drafted Pronger, there were like five big name guys. It's not that kind of draft. We like the players that are right where we are picking, right down to 40. We're happy with the grouping. We think there is quality in this draft."

As for possible free agents, he says, it's still premature to speculate about names: "The list of guys who are free agents now is not the list that will be there on July 1."

What he's not looking for this summer is a starting goalie: That job already belongs to James Reimer.

"The kid took the net away from the other two goalies," says Burke. "Every goalie, at some point in his career, has to grab the net. And the other goalies always fight when you try to grab the net. We had three goalies that were in the hunt and one kid grabbed the net this year.

"The issue is going to be who else is here and how else do we surround him and support him. But, yes, I think he's demonstrated the right to come back as the starter."

Where does this leave Jonas Gustavsson?

"We still haven't given up on the Monster at all. We signed him for a reason. We still believe in him. We have to see how things sort themselves out."

Despite not making the playoffs, despite using the F-word, Burke is quick to praise his team's run in 2011.

"It's a strong finish and it's not a phantom finish. It's not a meaningless last dozen games. It's been a six-week marathon. These guys have put together solid efforts, night in and night out, for basically six, seven weeks now. I like that."

"I like the work ethic of this group. I like the leadership of this group. I like our reserve list now, as far as the assets we've added with the first round picks and Colborne and Gardiner. I really feel like we have some real assets in the pipeline."

So are you satisfied with the progress?

"I'm never where I'd like to be at any point,” he says, just as the Eagles' "Peaceful Easy Feeling" strums to life in the speakers above our heads. "I'm not trying to give you an obscure, Zen answer. I'm never happy. We're in a non-playoff spot, I'm not happy. Do I see the progress? Yes. Am I happy with where we are? No. I was born impatient and I'm going to die impatient."

Let's try this again. Are you less unhappy than you were during our December interview?

There is another pause.

"Yes," Burke says, sipping a Diet Coke. "This isn't spin, you know. The general manager can try and spin things when you miss the playoffs. This isn't spin. The first thing I said is, 'It's a failure.' That's the last thing I will say.

"But in between, do I see massive change and improvement? Yes. Do I see cause for optimism? Yes. Do I feel we'll have a lot less work to do this summer than we've had in the past? Yes. Those are all important things."

And so with the last game unfolding Saturday, his message to Leaf fans is simple: "I hope they see the progress like I do. We're going to get there."

PHOTO: VINAY MENON/TORONTO STAR

Game 80: The End

So that's it. This uneven, teeter-totter of a season has come to an unofficial end.

It happened at precisely 9:26 p.m.

Toronto and Washington were tied 2-2 at the ACC. But the fate of Leafs Nation was settled across the border when Buffalo scored into an empty net, giving them a 4-2 win over Tampa and, more important, giving Leaf fans a sixth consecutive year without postseason action.

To be honest, I'm surprised by how hard it hit me. Even this morning, as I wheeled out the recycling and fed the cats, the feeling of disappointment was wildly out of proportion with reality.

I mean, we knew "mathematical elimination" was all but inevitable. It may have been written in invisible ink but it was in our calendars some time ago. This race was always the longest of long shots. The odds never moved beyond grim. The surge was doomed, likely to run out of space and time.

No matter.

Over the last few weeks, as this young team clawed their way out from the crater they dug during a disastrous first half, it was hard not to admire their own fierce determination, their own faith in the impossible.

At 9:31, as regulation time ended and the cameras showed the bench, I actually winced. The silhouette of those slouched bodies – every face etched with crushed disappointment – showed just how much they believed.

They cared.

The pundits are now free to wag their fingers and conduct armchair postmortems on 2010-2011. The self-appointed experts can make sense of what happened, what should happen and what might possibly happen.

Me, I just want to say thank you to this young team.

Am I delusional? Crazy? A glutton for punishment? Has years of on-ice mediocrity dulled my critical faculties and lowered my expectations to zero? Am I suffering from a godforsaken mix of Stockholm Syndrome and Blind Faith?

Maybe.

All I really know is this: For the first time in a long time, I am bidding farewell to a season with no regrets and no residual anger. History may deem 2010-2011 to be another failure but it sure as hell doesn't feel that way at 8:53 a.m. this morning.

So, thank you.

Having watched every minute of every game this season, I believe my beloved team is finally, at long last, on the right track. The pieces are coming together. The future looks brighter than it has for quite some time.

In my opinion, my proudly biased opinion, this is not The End. It is The Beginning and I can't wait until the fall.

PHOTOS: STEVE RUSSELL/TORONTO STAR

Commenting Thread: Leafs, Caps, vodka, lemon squares and fighting the looming threat of Elimination

PHOTO: DARREN CALABRESE/CANADIAN PRESS

Song: Dedicated to all the teams that did not help

 

Game 79: What the inside of my brain looks like this morning

Commenting Thread: Battle of Ontario

PHOTO: CARLOS OSORIO/TORONTO STAR

Game 78: Brilliant and glorious, the finest moment so far

When we were kids, every summer included at least one stateside road trip.

Sometimes it was Buffalo or New York City. But usually, the destination was Harrisburg or Akron, the city where I was born.

Sometimes I'd fall asleep in the back of our beat-up station wagon. And when I came to an hour or so later, the vista flashing past my window felt different.

We were on the same highway. But you could feel the destination rumbling closer. The view had changed.

There have been many dazzling moments in this second half.

A 9-3 demolition of Atlanta on January 7. Back-to-back wins in Los Angeles and San Jose the following week. Four wins in the first five games of February. Clutch victories throughout March, as this improbable, electrifying race continued.

But last night was truly special.

It all started at 7:06 of the first with a highly symbolic goal. Luke Schenn, this team's future, fired a shot that deflected off a hapless Tomas Kaberle, this team's past.

The future had officially surpassed the past...

To appreciate the future, all you really need to do is watch Nazem Kadri's shootout winner. In those few brilliant seconds, this team rumbled closer to wherever we are all going.

Kadri crossed the line, deployed a phantom carry, twisted his body, tapped his stick, bobbed his head, lifted his right leg for no apparent reason and then went to the backhand, deking so masterfully it's a small miracle he didn't skate away wearing Tim Thomas' moustache.

Boston was trying to clinch the Northeast Division. The Leafs were just trying to stay alive. But when Kadri scored, the gap in the present standings seemed meaningless.

At that second, it was all about the future.

Put it this way: If I knew nothing about either team and was asked, "Which one would you like to watch again?" the answer would have been, "The guys in white."

The guys who just came from behind to win. Not the guys in black and yellow, clustered on their bench, trying to make sense of what just went wrong.

Zdena Chara may be a walking solar eclipse. He may need to go in and out of the dressing room all night so engineers can recalibrate his center of gravity. But I think I'd rather watch the much smaller Timmy Brent dive like a possessed madman, blocking Chara blasts with a gritty resolve that can't be statistically quantified.

Is Thomas the best goalie in the league? That's nice. But all things considered, I think I'd like to watch more of this James Reimer kid, the one who stopped 35 of 38 shots in regulation and overtime, all three in the shootout and who has now beaten Thomas in three straight games.

Milan Lucic is a hell of a hockey player, no question. But when Jay Rosehill responded to Lucic's thuggish antics by dropping the gloves and giving his team an emotional lift with a long, spirited bout, I don't know, there was just something reassuring about his deadpan expression in the penalty box: "You mess with us and I'll mess with you, Milan. End of story."

You know what else the future includes? It includes a never-say-die attitude. In fact, that may be the biggest difference between the first half and this 2011 watershed.

Boston took over in the second period, scoring three times in 6 minutes and 22 seconds. They outshot the Leafs 18-7. They were basking in the rapture of their demented fans. They had a lead going into the third, which over the previous 76 games has translated into 28 wins and 1 regulation loss.

No matter.

Shift by shift, minute by minute, puck battle by puck battle, the Leafs regained control. They telegraphed no inferiority. They betrayed no surrender. They took the fight to Boston. They turned on the afterburners in the third and created some of the most exciting hockey we've witnessed this season.

And when another sprinkling of pixie dust had settled, when this rousing 4-3 win was in the books, it glittered with all the small things big teams learn to do when they are still young and rebuilding, when they are still on the road to greatness.

The Leafs outhit Boston 23-16. They blocked more shots (23-16) and won more faceoffs (36-29). Up against one of this season's Cup contenders, the Leafs matched the Bruins in confidence, swagger and determination.

Before the shootout started, TD Garden crackled with "Paradise City" by Guns N' Roses. At some point, as this team rumbles toward the destination, we may look back and think of that song as prophetic.

Are you ready for Saturday? You should be. The view is about to change again.

MAIN PHOTO: REUTERS

Commenting Thread: Toronto at Boston

PHOTO: BRIAN SNYDER/REUTERS

Game 77: The Leafs call another time-out on reality

What a wild night.

It's a good thing there are only five games remaining. I don't know what to write anymore. So maybe it's best if I just cut-and-paste a few sentences from recent weeks that, once again, seem applicable.

"This young team is hitting its stride." "The Leafs refuse to quit." "This could go down to the wire." "If the dream is dead, someone forgot to tell them." "Who knows what tomorrow may bring."

That's about it, really. Who the hell knows?

In the real world, the odds remain bleak. But these guys no longer inhabit the real world. They left the real world in January. They are now living on a remote island in a parallel universe where odds and numbers and standings are a mirage.

They are immune to reality. And as such, we are on the outside looking in, forced to make sense of this surreal push and endless loop of stirring, near-death victories.

Last night, just as 17 nights before, they beat Buffalo by a 4-3 score.

The surreal spectacle started at 1:34 of the first when Dion Phaneuf barreled down the left side and unleashed a howitzer from the blueline that made Ryan Miller look like Dennis Miller on sleeping pills.

It's possible the Buffalo goaltender – NHL player of the week and long-time haunter of Toronto dreams – simply forgot the month. I mean, if it was December, his frozen reaction to a Phaneuf wind-up would make sense.

In December, that shot does not catch the far corner, as it did last night. In December, that shot does not even catch the far boards. Instead, it explodes off the captain’s stick and forces spectators in the upper bowl to throw popcorn in the air as they run for cover.

But it's not December. It's March and everything about this team is different. The focus, the determination, the resilience, it's all different. The surreal late-season push is different. The atmosphere inside the ACC is different.

When James Reimer, a religious fellow who does not even swear, begins embellishing contact to draw a penalty, you just know it's all different now.

In December, Nazem Kadri looked like a toddler lost at the mall. In March, he has found his game. He was a force to be reckoned with for two periods, blazing around the ice, carrying the puck with poise and verve.

The second goal, banged in by Darryl Boyce at 18:46 of the first, came after Kadri literally willed his way to the net. The third goal, scored by Clarke MacArthur, came after Kadri made a beautiful cross-ice pass, his weapon of choice during this second tour of duty.

In December, the Leafs would’ve been demoralized by Buffalo’s first goal, which came with 12 seconds left in the opening period. They would’ve collapsed after surrendering two goals in 30 seconds, which allowed the Sabres to knot the game 3-3 in the second.

But it’s March and these guys are in their own deranged universe.

After Mikhail Grabovski corralled a dazzling pass from Phil Kessel and snapped the puck in to restore the lead, the stage was set for another wild finish.

Has anybody checked on Joe Bowen this morning? Should we send over a cup of tea with honey? Does he have laryngitis? My God, as the clock ticked down and Buffalo pressed – creating several harrowing moments – how Bowen did not spit out his tongue and vocal cords is a mystery.

You know something? We were all Joe Bowen last night.

We were reduced to the same guttural sounds – "Gaah!" "Eeya!” "Ooowee!" We were speaking gibberish. We were hoarse with delirium. We were barking repetitive exclamations at the TV – "Kill this penalty! Kill it!" "Stop that shot, Reims! Stop it!" "Clear the puck! Clear it!"

When the final buzzer sounded, I was shocked to find myself in the exact same position as Reimer, with a couple of minor differences. He was kneeling on the ice, looking up and smiling. I was kneeling on the floor, looking at my chest and begging my heart to restart.

So it's Boston tomorrow. Brace yourself for another wild night.

No matter what happens over the next five games, you really have to admire these guys for doing all those things I mentioned in the third paragraph.

Grim reality is rarely this much fun to watch.

MAIN PHOTO: RENE JOHNSTON/TORONTO STAR

Commenting Thread: Buffalo at Toronto

PHOTO: TARA WALTON/TORONTO STAR