Straight Ahead, No More Stopping

Call it Liberation Day. Liberation, that is, from the contagious nonsense that going backwards can produce forward momentum.

It's been the scourge of Toronto in 2008. First Cliff Fletcher, then Don Matthews, then Cito Gaston, then Paul Beeston.

Matthews was a complete disaster, and one suspects that when it's time for Gaston and Beeston to move out and on again, they won't have made the Blue Jays even a shadow of what they used to be.

Fletcher? Well, we've explained how that was at best a neutral exercise for the Maple Leafs, and at worst a negative sidetrack, with pointless and wasteful trading away of draft picks.

Indeed, on his own the Silver Fox tried to do an everything-old-is-new-again trick, bringing back 41-year-old netminder Curtis Joseph in the same way Punch Imlach, in his second go-round, brought back Carl Brewer.

Joseph, brought in as a favour to friends while Scott Clemmensen was dumped, has been so bad that Ron Wilson didn't even want to talk about him last night. Watching him kneeling on the goal line last night as Phil Kessel snapped a puck over his shoulder was just, well, unfortunate to watch.

Right now, his main value seems to be as that of a brake whenever the team starts to experience more than a game or two of success and threatens to pull too far ahead of Tampa and other eastern doormats.

The final and official departure of Mats Sundin, then, should end all this silliness once and for all, at least as far as the Leafs go. I was still getting emails this week from people wondering if maybe, just maybe the Leafs might yet sign him, or do some sort of sign-and-trade magic.

Well, it's over. Time to move on. Brian Burke did the second he arrived in town.

(Of course, we may not have actually seen the very last of Sundin as a Leaf. No team likes to brings former stalwarts back like the Leafs. Wendel Clark was traded and came back. Ditto for Doug Gilmour, once as a player and once as an executive/minor league coach. Darryl Sitter eventually joined the front office. Rick Vaive worked for Leafs TV. So it would be unwise to totally rule out one more jaunt in blue-and-white for Sundin someday.)

There's no point even discussing Sundin anymore from a Leaf point-of-view. This is now about Luke Schenn and rebuilding and finding ways to get more Schenns, not finding a way to get back to the playoffs as soon as possible.

It was that sort of thinking that got the Leafs into the mess in which they're currently locked.

Still, it's remarkable to hear people accuse Sundin of hypocrisy and disloyalty as he exits. He was as loyal to the Leafs as they ever were to him. This was a team that tried to browbeat him into waiving the very same no-trade provisions it had given him, and yet standing by the terms of his contract was interpreted as treason by some.

And hypocrisy? There are those who say that because Sundin said last season he didn't want to be a rental and join a new team partway through the season means his decision to join the Canucks now is hypocritical.

Not even close. First of all, what one of us out there might have thought one way about their job situation last February, and very differently today? Adults change their minds. Working people change their minds. Millionaire athletes change their minds.

That doesn't make it hypocrisy.

Moreover, given that the Canucks have left open cap room specifically earmarked for Sundin since the summer, you could argue that team has been waiting for him all along, as though he was a shadow teammate.

If he wins a Cup in Vancouver, good for him and good for them. Let's face it, there's a long history of Leaf players going on to great team or individual success after leaving the club, from Gerry Cheevers to Bernie Parent to Randy Carlyle to Doug Jarvis to Craig Muni to Larry Murphy to Dave Andreychuk. If Sundin has the ultimate success with the Canucks, it certainly doesn't alter Leaf history.

It should, however, help make the way of the future abundantly clear to anyone who seriously believed this year's team could make post-season play or that this mess could be fixed quickly by Burke.

The absence of any player who could yet be designated as a successor to Sundin as captain should make it crystal clear to one and all that this team is one step ahead of an expansion outfit.

This is going to take two or three years of pain, pain that could be worth it if good decisions are made and patience is exercised. By the March trade deadline, well-known Leafs (Nik Antropov, Nik Ponikarovsky, pehaps Tomas Kaberle) will be gone, and new prospects and picks will have been acquired.

Given a choice between a 37-year-old Sundin and a new management team headed by Burke, sensible people would have chosen Burke every day and twice on Sunday. But having Sundin linger in his indecision left a scent of hesitation in the air.

No longer. Liberation from old thinking should be gone for good.

Hopefully, most people won't choose to diss Sundin now that's he's definitely gone. He was durable and effective for all of the years he was in Toronto, a pleasure to deal with from a media point of view and a captain who truly cared about his teammates.

He's one of the top five Leaf players of the post-expansion era, and one of the classiest athletes to grace this city in its history. He was a throwback to the days of Apps and Kennedy, a humble, unassuming athlete who never blamed a teammate or sought controversy and notoriety ahead of the pursuit of team goals.

Praise the athletic memory of this man. We were lucky to have him.

Comments

[Jim G]

Mats probably didnt care in the least about the Toronto Maple Leafs franchise -- he cared about winning a Stanley Cup while being a Toronto Maple Leaf.
Stop ragging him -- the dream for him was still alive beyond the trade deadline last year -- and if sticking to the plan through those thin times to try and bring a Cup to the Leafs isnt loyalty, I dont know what is.

[DGL]

For once I agree with a Damien Cox article.
He was a classy athlete, a gentleman and Toronto should be glad for the years we had him. I told friends last week he would sign with the Canuks. I said he would go there because of the hassles and he wouldnt want to upset dressing room in NYC with all the cap problems. Bang on. Mats always does the classy move.
I saw them all play, Keon, Sittler, Baun, Vaive, Clarke, etc. Mats Sundin was my favourite by a country mile.

[Rory Breaker]

The only selfishness I see in this whole thing is from the fans that wanted Mats to accept a trade. So it wasn't enough that he was forced to play with Hoglund, Renberg (who was not the same player he was in Philly) and some of the other third liners they put on his wings? No, he wasn't Doug Gilmour or Wendel Clark, so what? If he would have requested a trade then people would be saying he was a traitor. There's no pleasing many of the TO fans. I think that if Mats would have played for New York, Chicago, Boston, Montreal, or Detroit, the fans would not only have been heartbroken to see him leave but also to see him pressured into the trade last year. I doubt that he wins a cup with Vancouver but at least he's gotten away from ungrateful TO. Good luck Mats.

[fk]

Good, now make excuses for him. He's going to go to Van to play with Kyle Waivers again...maybe they can lure Jonas Hogland out of retirement so that Sundin can relaod his excuse cupboard when once again he's unable to make players or teams around him better.
13 solid years of nothing...who cares.

[Peter]

Who cares.

He didnt win anything here and i'm pretty sure he was never once ever nominated for an award?

[Rory Breaker]

Excuse me, what did Gilmour or Clark win in Toronto? There hasn't been a cup there since 67 and it's Mats Sundin's fault?

[Fortescue W. Povery]

I just love watching Leaf fans and management consume their heroes. How many times have players who were once the darling of the fans leave to a chorus of boos? No wonder hockey players just want to grab the money and run. You people, fans and management alike, disgust me.

[Yvonne]

Good Luck Matts. I always thought you were a great Captain and a classy hockey player. I think that the Leafs were lucky to have had you in the organization for so long. I hope you win a cup in Vancouver - you deserve it.

[Gizmo Slapshot Johnson]

I think Mats is a pretty smart guy and knows that there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes at MSLE that the public doesn't know about and I think that's why he's no longer a Leaf. And because Mats is a classy guy, he's not going to come out and throw MSLE under the bus although god knows he should.

Mats played great for Toronto, sure they're were days when he didn't but the guy's not superhuman he did what he could.

I remember years ago in a playoff game, I think against New Jersey, the Leafs were behind by 4 goals. Mats scored 2 goals and rallied his team to 2 more. They didn't win that night and were eliminated the next night but I'll aways remember the grit that he showed that night and a bit of frustration I think.

Yeah it sucks that things didn't go so great. It's too bad that other Toronto sports figures often leave on such sour notes (Vince Carter) maybe it's the number 13?

I think that this town owes him a lot. If he gets booed when he returns to Toronto with the Canucks I'm going to be sick to my stomach. He deserves a lot more than that and it would be good for this city to start respecting players.

[Fortescue W. Povery]

I just love watching Leaf fans and management consume their heroes. How many times have players who were once the darling of the fans leave to a chorus of boos? No wonder hockey players just want to grab the money and run. You people, fans and management alike, disgust me. By the way people, if you keep buying overpriced hockey tickets to watch a sad sack team, you will keep getting sad sack teams. Demand better you idiots!

[Anthony]

Damien, I tend to agree with most of your comments, but I do believe you need to give your head a shake on this one. The first thing I would do is ask that you look up the definition of loyalty. To be loyal is to be unswerving in ones allegiance. Often times, a true test of ones loyalty is exhibited when one is asked to do something that they really don't want to do. But, out of loyalty, they do what is asked anyway due to their unswerving allegiance to a particular group.

All this talk of loyalty coming out of the Sundin camp at last year's deadline really disgusted me, and members of the media should be ashamed for not calling him out on this. The Leafs paid Sundin quite handsomely over his tenure as a Leaf, in excess of some $60 million. At times he was one of the top paid athletes in the league, even though his point totals didn't justify the salary. In short, Toronto owed Sundin nothing as they, and the fans, not only treated him like a king, but paid him like one. The only time the franchise asked Sundin to exhibit some loyalty (after all the millions) was to wave his no trade clause. The organization at the time was in peril talent wise, and had to make this move for the "good" of the organization. Instead of doing the right thing and pay the Leafs back with a unselfish act of loyalty, he selfishly refused (and in doing so one can make a case that his refusal encourgaged the other members of the Muskoka 5 to stick to their guns as well). This was the one and only test of Sundin's loyalty to the organization he claims to have loved, and he failed it miserably. It is really quite a shame as he is perhaps one of the greatest Leafs of all time, and certainly a player I admired greatly.

One final point on hypocracy, again, shake that noggin Damien. According to your arguement, we may as well erase the word hypocrite from the dictionary, since it is ok for one to simply change their mind. I hope I never hear you bashing a politician in the future for saying one thing and doing another....I mean, cut the poor civil servant some slack, afterall, adults are allowed to change their minds aren't they? Come on.... thats really weak Damien.

Sundin was a great Leaf, probably the greatest. Unfortunately, the classless way he handled his departure will tarnish what was a remarkable career in the blue and white.

[David]

Your comments about Mats Sundin are on the mark, Damien. He was an outstanding Leaf captain. He defended often mediocre teams and team mates; he supported the organization through good and bad; and he provided a lengthy highlight reel of performances. No, he didn't bring a Cup to Toronto, but neither did Sittler or Gilmour. Was it his fault that an incompetent front office couldn't deliver the necessary supporting cast? I remember when Robert Reichel was our #2 centre. Yikes! If Sundin can be faulted, it's for his loyalty to an organization that was never committed to winning. Does anyone believe an Yzerman, a Sakic, or a Pronger - all Stanley Cup winners - would have stayed with the Leafs under those circumstances? Perhaps because some Leaf fans - I am a long suffering one - have wandered in the desert for so many years they can't see the oasis for the sand. Joni Mitchell was right: "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." Good luck Mats. Hope you can help bring a Cup to Vancouver.

[Robert B]

Maybe if the Leafs actually got someone to play with Mats, we would have actually won something.

But no, we got 13 years of Mats playing on a line with wingers who were clearly two or three talent levels below him, yet somehow putting up good point totals regardless.

This team didn't deserve you, Mats.

[david coates]

Typically homer boosterism from the apologists, Cox included, to come out of the woodwork to praise Sundin, when he has left the Leafs hamstrung without any compensation, all for the sake of him taking a Selanne/Forsbergian holiday from the rigors of an 82-game schedule, then going ahead with the deal from Vancouver that his agent said in July he wouldn't take. Another five years in the wilderness without a compass or a draft pick for us.
Not in it for the money? This is a guy who has earned more than $80 million in his career, most of that from the Leaf cashbox, and he doesn't owe the team anything? How about consideration for the people who pay his bills?

[Arthur Bailey]

Come on Damien. Sundin was as loyal to the Leafs as they were to him? BULLCRAP. A no trade clause has NEVER really been a no trade clause. Its waived all the time, and I've heard of no players that were not the Muskoka 5 refusing to waive it. A no trade clause, realistically, has worked more to give the player control of his destination, the prevent him from being traded at all.

If a politician says, before being elected "I will not raise taxes to balance the budget, I don't believe that is responsible governing" then is elected, and raises taxes anyways, HE IS A HYPOCRITE.

Mats said "I don't believe in joining a team part way through the season. I don't believe in the rental player concept. I believe in being with a group from the start. I won't waive my no trade clause because I want to finish my Career as a Maple Leaf"

Now, near the midway point of the season, Sundin has acted the politician, and gone against everything he said. He has joined a team (that is not the leafs so he won't be finishing his career with them) midway through the season, not being with the group from the start, and is, without argument, a rental player. if he signed a 2 year contract with Vancouver, he could have at least been a long term rental.

I'm sorry, that is hypocrisy. text book definition. Say one thing do the opposite.

[Chuck Diesel]

Wow you people are unreal. Owed the fans? Owed the city? First of all he performed his job perfectly, leading us in scoring all the time and never getting injured. Secondly, he did charity work, went to hospitals, visited schools. What planet are you on? Do you owe your company's customers when you leave? Do you leave work and go read to kids in a hospital? I didn't think so. You lifeless morons go check yourselves in the mirror. He owes no one. If you feel you're being ripped off and are "owed" something stop paying for tickets and jerseys. Cut the team off. You can't can you. Because you love it. They have a product you're addicted to and you're whining about it. The fans in this city let him down when they called him a traitor for NOT WANTING TO LEAVE. Oxymoronism at it's best. Now he's gone and rightly so. You are all a bunch of Judases and no one in Toronto from hockey to soccer will ever want to be loyal to people like you.

[Confused]

I've never been a big Sundin fan, but do agree that he was a decent player and a class act. However, the animosity that has developed in Toronto over him leaving is his own fault for the most part. Sundin needs some serious PR work. I understand that Sundin is a private guy, but I think in this case, it has back-fired on him. If Sundin would have just told the Toronto faithful that there are things in his life going on right now (marriage...health, age...bla bla - didn't wan't to be traded for these reasons), and that I may not be back next year, then I think most people would have been accepting and wished him luck. But to give the fans some of the balogny he did, and to basically slip out of town with not even thanking the fans, will haunt him forever. He should remember that it is these fans that made him stinking rich and basically gave him the keys to the city.

[GM MMA]

In the context of his loyalty to TML fans he sure is a hypocrite. I believe that he should be held up to account for his words last year.

He has every right to be spiteful of the leafs from an organizational point of view, but, in being spiteful, he also did a disservace to the fans of this once great hockey club.

[Wendel's Moustache]

I'm not going to reiterate all the points I've been making since last night (shameless plug: read the blog for that), but I will say this:

Saying one thing and doing the exact opposite seems to me the definition of hypocrisy. Calling it "changing his mind" doesn't alter that fact. Plus he didn't just say he didn't want to be a rental. He said he didn't believe in that. There is a difference.

[Nick]

I don't understand Mats opponents crying "selfishness" and "disregard".

Why does Mats "owe" something to the fans and the franchise? Why is he - according to the Leafs faithful - somehow morally obligated to compromise his career, break a bonded contract and accept a trade to better the organization? Like Damien points out, how many of us have been forced to make decisions between career and personal life? How are pro-athletes any different and by that accord, why do different set of rules apply to them?

How trite and potentially dangerous would it be to base your career - life - decisions based on fans? Imagine if we all designed our life-plans around what other people say? If anything, its hypocritical to label Sundin as a hypocrite when none of us working stiffs would ever prescribe to that MO.

Sundin owes nothing to anybody except himself and his family. Whatever intangibles that he owed MLSE and fans he obligated right till the point his contract expired.

[mark]

Adam... you're comparison of Mats to Ray Bourque is absolutlely ridiculous. Ray Bourque asked to be traded to a cup contender at a time Boston was in need of rebuilding. Mats did not as to be traded and his contract, actually signed by both sides in good faith, was meant to keep him in Toronto. The MLSE changed their mind. So, MLSE went about trying to find ways to make him so unconfortable that he would waive his no trade clause. They played this very publicly in the media. In short, they treated him like garbage after 13 years of stellar leadership both on and off the ice. If there is any 'tarnish' in this episode it belongs to Richard Peddie, the worst professional sports executive in the history of professional sports. A man who's ego knows no bounds and shows zero class in dealing with players and fans alike. So, take your Mats tirade and stuff it. Good luck Mats.

[glen]

I cannot get over Mats comment from last year. "I will not go as rental player. I would want to spend the whole year with a team. It wouldn't mean the same." Well Mats, what happened to change your philosophy. Were you honest last year? I think not. You don't have the balls to see a championship through to the end because when push comes to shove, you don't have the integrity to give your best. You didn't want to win a championship last year. Why is it any different this year? For you it's all about Mats. While I enjoyed how you entertained us for over a decade, you led us to squat. When the pressure was on (series against Buffalo and Carolina) you folded like a cheap piece of IKEA furniture. And like IKEA furniture you will break down sooner than later. My prediction is that you will not play in the playoffs. Your team will miss or your creaky hip will prevent you. As for Mr. Cox, it's amazing how ex Leafs become great in your eyes the minute they leave. You really should get your negative attitude checked. I'm sure you would find something negative to write about even if the Leafs had won the Crosby lottery. I will pay close attention to your articles if Burke brings a cup here. I'm sure you will bash someone for the way that they skated with the cup.

[sheamus]

Hear hear! Well said. Good luck Mats - you, as one of the classiest athletes to ever set foot in Toronto, will be missed.

The Leafs never, ever gave him a fair shot at winning a Cup or, for that matter, even playing with decent linemates (except for those few seasons when he at times skated with Mogilny and Roberts). Yes, they made the top four a couple times. But remember Jonas Hoglund??

To the naysayers: get over yourselves. He doesn't owe you or the city anything, and most other athletes in his position would have demanded a trade years ago.

[Conn Smythe]

'Wow you people are unreal. Owed the fans? Owed the city? First of all he performed his job perfectly, leading us in scoring all the time and never getting injured. Secondly, he did charity work, went to hospitals, visited schools. What planet are you on?'

Chuck, hockey players are expected to do charity work. Players who are paid the big bucks $$ (ie, Mats) are supposed to lead their team in scoring and points.

That said, I'm not angry that Mats has signed with the Canucks and has left the Leafs. There would have been no point for him to come back to a team that is rebuilding.

I wish him good luck (but not on Feb. 21st).

This whole discussion and focus on Mats is a joke, though. Cox, the Leafs asked him to waive his no trade clause. How was he brow beated? He made millions of dollars playing a simple game, so no, I don't have much sympathy for him being asked to waive his no trade clause. Get over it. That's not questioning his loyalty - that's asking him to help his current team. He said no - end of story.

[jonathan]

he had every right to act in a manner that suited him best and he did. however, the fact is that in the end he comes off looking like a bold-faced liar. maybe that's why he's so good at poker.