MacArthur Expected to Stay Put

The NHL's 3 p.m. trade deadline is expected to come and go, leaving Clarke MacArthur in a Maple Leafs uniform for at least the rest of this season, and probably next, as well.

In what could be a very slow final day of dealing, NHL general managers were reporting it was "very slow" overnight and early this morning, times when in the past deals might have started cooking.

The Leafs, meanwhile, are apparently comfortable going to restricted free agency and quite possibly arbitration with MacArthur, the club's leading scorer, and have backed off their previous stance that he would be traded if a new contract could not be arranged by the trade deadline. It was almost exactly that scenario that drove Dominic Moore out of town two years ago, but the Leafs appear to have softened their stance on MacArthur.

Meanwhile, MacArthur's agent, Don Meehan of Newport Sports. told The Star from New York late Sunday that he does not believe the Leafs intend to trade his client on Monday unless they get a boffo offer out of the blue.

"My impression is they want to make a deal with Clarke," said Meehan. "They'll watch him for the balance of the year, see how he does, see how the team does, and then reflect on that. It's not something they have to do right now."

That said, the Buffalo Sabres added a winger late Sunday, acquiring Brad Boyes from St. Louis for a 2011 second round draft pick, which in theory could mean the market heats up for MacArthur. Boyes makes $4 million this year and next, and his addition suggests the Sabres are about to become a more financially aggressive club under new owner Terry Pegula.

Most analysts believe MacArthur, who had the Atlanta Thrashers walk away from a $2.4 million arbitration award last summer before signing with the Leafs for $1.1 million, stands to get an award of around $3 million on a one-year deal in August if he goes to arbitration again. He has 19 goals and 29 assists this season.

If the Leafs and MacArthur can't come up with anything more than a one-year deal, he would be an unrestricted free agent in July, 2012.

"I don't think they feel their (arbitration) exposure on this is something they can't live with," said Meehan. "I don't see this as an urgent issue. They're happy with him, and he's happy with them."

Insiders also suggest it's unlikey Brad Richards of the Dallas Stars will be moved before Monday's deadline. Richards skated on Sunday in full equipment and could be back in the Stars lineup fairly soon. To wrench him out of Dallas by tomorrow, some team would have to offer a deal along the lines of what New Jersey got from Atlanta in exchange for Ilya Kovalchuk last March, and that seems unlikely.

Chris Phillips, meanwhile, signed a three-year deal with Ottawa, taking him off the rental market.

Edmonton's Ales Hemsky could be the biggest name left, along with defenceman John-Michael Liles of the Colorado Avalanche. The Leafs, meanwhile, are still hoping to land a defenceman, someone to help the blueline after the club surrendered four one-goal margins on Saturday to Pittsburgh and a two-goal lead to Atlanta on Sunday.

Florida, losers again on Sunday, could be two pivots, Stephen Weiss and Marty Reasoner, on the market. The Leafs have some interest in Weiss, but aren't expected to be willing to give up the two first round picks they picked up in deals over the past two weeks.

 

They're In The Race

Gotta go for it now. Four points out with 21 games to play. A playoff berth is there for the taking.

But what exactly does that mean? What message are the Maple Leafs sending boss Brian Burke these days?

Now 8-2-2 in their last 12 games and seeming to gain strength with every veteran player sent packing, this is a bit of a conundrum. James Reimer, even after giving up a four-spot to the Habs on Thursday night, is a big part of the equation, giving the team a steady hand in the crease it simply didn't have for the first half of the season. Phil Kessel, meanwhile, is hot again, and like most teams, the Leafs are a much superior team in games when their best forward scores than in games he doesn't.

But how to figure the improved play with Francois Beauchemin, Kris Versteeg and Tomas Kaberle traded away, quality veterans all, with only Joffrey Lupul added and Brett Lebda given an expanded role? Is Keith Aulie so much better than Beauchemin, does Dion Phaneuf have more room to lead without much experience at all around him?

The schedule, meanwhile, is also a big part of the reason the Leafs have picked up the pace. It's been very soft of late, and while they deserve credit for taking advantage of that schedule, it also undermines to a small degree their acheivements.  More opportunity lies in the immediate future with the battered Penguins - minus Sidney Crosby, Evgeny Malkin and now Brooks Orpik as well - in town Saturday, followed by a visit to drooping Atlanta on Sunday in the final game before the trade deadline.

Then, weirdly, the Pens come to the ACC again on Wednesday. Go figure that sked.

After that, no extended road trips, no lengthy travel.

So what should Burke do? Add a body? Or just let the kids play, see whether their improved play is real, or whether it falters under the pressure of a fight for a playoff berth? Carolina, the team the Leafs are apparently trying to catch now, added scoring winger Cory Stillman on Thursday, a veteran who played on the Hurricanes Stanley Cup winner and a proven playoff performer.

Does Burke try to match that move?

Two things he's likely not to do, and that's subtract a useful player - hard to see Clarke MacArthur departing even if unsigned - or move a meaningful draft pick or prospect for a rental or an older player likely to be around only for a year or two. There will be no major deviation from the plan now that it's starting to show some results.

On a trip through western Canada, you can see there are tough choices everywhere. In Vancouver, there's great debate over the quality of the fourth line, and even whether slumping second line winger Mason Raymond is up to the challenge of an extended playoff run.

In Calgary, interim GM Jay Feaster is searching for ways to clear cap space to add something, knowing full well the Flames lack prospects to guarantee a particularly bright future. In Edmonton, home of the 30th place Oilers, rearguards like Ladislav Smid and Jim Vandermeer may be on the move, and the debate over who GM Steve Tambellini should pick if the club picks first overall again - Swedish defenceman Adam Larsson seems to be the popular choice - is heating up.

In Toronto, the belief a few weeks ago was that the playoffs were but a remote dream and that the tough choices would revolve around getting Kaberle to waive his no-trade clause. Now, that's in the past, the chance at a playoff berth is at hand and totally different choices have presented themselves.

Gotta go for it. But what exactly does that mean?

 

 

 

 

Recap: NHL trade deadline Q&A

Damien held a live Q&A about NHL trade moves at noon Thursday.

Mid-Week Meanderings

Leaf fans can officially start feeling bullish about the future.

When that future will deliver something tangible, of course, is hard to project. It's been 12 years since the Sedin twins went to Vancouver, and only now, really, have they and the rest of the Canucks put themselves in a potential Stanley Cup winning position.

But Toronto fans should feel reasonably confident this is a team that can get back into the post-season in the next two years, and with a very, very young team.

James Reimer's stats in goal appear to be the sign of a real goalie, not a flash-in-the-pan. In Dion Phaneuf, Luke Schenn and Keith Aulie, there are three defenceman 25 or younger, all big, all physical. There's a gamebreaker on the wing in Phil Kessel. He's not a complete player, but he can do some things few players can. Most important, perhaps, is the sign of potential depth down the middle, with Mikhail Grabovski and Tyler Bozak in the NHL, and Nazem Kadri and Joe Colborne with the Marlies.

Now there are two first round picks the team can either use or package to get something helpful, either a higher pick or a good young player. The movement of youngsters like James Neal, Erik Johnson, Chris Stewart and Alex Goligoski in recent days suggests that there is a burgeoning market out there of players between the ages of 22-25, which is exactly the age group Brian Burke and Co. are targeting.

Two factors seem to have change the Leaf picture from muddled to promising. First, the development of Reimer. Without goaltending in the NHL, everything else is distorted, and Reimer may be the best youngster in net the Leafs have drafted and developed since Felix Potvin.

Second was the Tomas Kaberle trade. The actual results of that deal won't be known for years, but it positioned the Leafs more dramatically for public consumption as a rebuilding, growth team, with young talent at the NHL level and useful picks on the way. With that trade, so much else of what the Leafs have done makes more sense.

A 7-2-2 run in the last little while isn't as meaningful as the framework that's now in place for a good hockey club somewhere down the road.

Other Wednesday considerations:

--Few NHL players have been out as long as Sidney Crosby with concussion problems and returned to be as good as they were. It's just a fact. At seven weeks and counting, it seems pretty clear Crosby's career is in jeopardy.

--Brad Richards is in a similar spot. Moreover, the longer he's out with a concussion, the less likely teams are going to be to come running with long-term, big money contracts. Day-by-day, the salary number goes down.

--The Calgary Flames have played as well as anyone of late. But that doesn't change the fact they have 10 no-movement contracts, not much on the farm and few prospects. In that light, making the playoffs, as they may do, could be counter-productive to the long-term interests of the club.

--The Phoenix Coyotes have won eight straight. Somebody please explain. While you're at it, explain how the franchise that we were told would be locked up and sold by Dec. 31st is still in the hands of the league. The longer the 'Yotes continue to be in this limbo, the less likely the league will be in any position to keep the Thrashers in Atlanta, even if it wanted to.

--With defencemen Andrei Markov, Josh Gorges and Jaroslav Spacek all out for the season, it seems less and less likely the Canadiens will go anywhere this spring. Then they walk into Vancouver and beat the NHL's best club. Go figure.

--Brad Marchand has to be the quietest 19-goal scorer in the NHL this season. He had none in 20 games last year. Combine that with the fact that Milan Lucic now has 25 goals in 57 games after getting only nine last season, and you can see why the Bruins are no longer the lowest scoring team in the league.

--While concussions are now a major story in hockey, that should have been the case long ago. Chatting with Hall of Famer Michel Goulet this week, it's startling to remember that Goulet already had 548 goals to his name when, at the age of 34, he was forced out of the game with concussion problems after crashing into the end boards while playing with Chicago. He could have played for another four or five years. Put that name alongside Pat LaFontaine, Eric Lindros, Keith Primeau and others, and the carnage caused by head injuries over the past 20 years starts to become shocking.

-The most amazing stat of this hockey season? Could be that 18 teams have scored more goals this season than the Washington Capitals. 

 

 

 

 

 

Will There Be Anything Left for Deadline Day?

Guess the St. Louis Blues and Colorado Avalanche didn't like their teams. 

In two big deals on Friday, the Blues swapped captain Eric Brewer to Tampa Bay, then after flying home from Buffalo announced a whopper of a trade in which former No. 1 overall pick Erik Johnson, a defenceman drafted in 2006 with the idea he would be the foundation of the St. Louis blueline for a decade or more, was peddled to Colorado.

Winger Jay McClement and a conditional first rounder went to the Avalanche, who packaged power forward Chris Stewart, defenceman Kevin Shattenkirk and a conditional second rounder to the Blues. Earlier in the day, Colorado had dealt goalie Craig Anderson, who received Vezina Trophy consideration a year ago, to Ottawa for Brian Elliott.

Geez, given all that the Blues, Leafs, Bruins, Senators and Avalanche have already done with the trade deadline still nine days away, you wonder how much there will be left to be done on that big day.

Johnson played only 203 games in St. Louis, none in the playoffs. To compare, even Patrik Stefan, the bust first overall pick of Atlanta in '99, skated in 414 regular seasons as a Thrasher before that team decided he wasn't their franchise player after all. Alexandre Daigle, arguably an even bigger bust, played 301 games in Ottawa before being shipped out.

So on the surface, it sure seems the Blues gave up on Johnson awfully quickly. The big blueliner never seemed to get his career going in Missouri after ripping up his knee in a freak golf cart accident after his rookie season.

The Blues still have lots of young players, but Johnson was supposed to be the cornerstone. Instead, he's headed to Denver after the Blues started strong this season but fell. In fact, this was a peculiar deal between the 13th team in the west, the Blues, and the 14th, Colorado.

The Avs, meanwhile, were a playoff team in the west last year, with both Stewart and Anderson primary individual contributors. Including this deal with the Blues, the Avs have moved their first round picks in the '04 draft (Wojtek Wolski), '06 draft (Stewart) and '07 draft (Shattenkirk) over the past year.

 

 

 

 

Kaberle on the Move

All signs are pointing to Tomas Kaberle becoming a Boston Bruin today.

This could change, either in a league trade call that has yet to take place between the Leafs and Bruins, or if the teams miscommunicate in the way they did back in June, 2009 when a deal involving Kaberle for Phil Kessel literally fell apart on the draft floor because Brian Burke and Peter Chiarelli believed they were talking about different deals.

Or, of course, the B's might feel better about their prospects after pounding the Islanders last night.

But right now, it's believed the Leafs would get Boston's first round pick this June  (not the second of two first rounders sent to the Bruins in the Kessel deal) and a prospect. Winger Blake Wheeler is apparently not in play, but the Leafs might be zeroing in on one of two good Boston prospects, Ontario junior Ryan Spooner or Providence centre Joe Colborne.

For Leaf fans, Colborne might be the prospect they'd be happiest with, given that he's 6-foot-5 and was Boston's first rounder back in 2008. Spooner has been a more prolific offensive player, particularly this year with Doug Gilmour's Kingston Frontenacs, but he's not as big as Colborne.

If this deal comes together, and again, all bets are off until Burke and Chiarelli actually agree on what they're trading, it's likely to happen early this afternoon. Back in '09, the two men believed they had agreed on a Kaberle-Kessel deal, but it fell apart at the very last second when Chiarelli believed he was getting the seventh pick overall, which the Leafs used to pick Nazem Kadri, as part of the package.

If the Leafs can make this deal work, they theoretically might be able to put together two first round picks - they got Philly's in the Kris Versteeg trade - and move up much higher in the June draft. Otherwise, they would have picked up defence prospect Jake Gardiner, two firsts and another good prospect from Boston in the past two weeks.

On the goalie front, Ben Scrivens is expected to start for the Marlies tonight, and then back up James Reimer when the Leafs play Ottawa tomorrow night.  

 

Help From The Farm

For the first time in years, the Maple Leafs can truly say they've received critical assistance from their farm system this season.

And they're probably going to need more.

Joey Crabb. Darryl Boyce. Keith Aulie. James Reimer. Jay Rosehill. All have arrived from the Marlies at different junctures this season and now, with the club dreaming about the playoffs again, are playing useful roles for the club. You might even be able to add the name of Christian Hanson to the list, a player written off by many (if you don't make it right away with the Leafs there's always legions of folks ready to write you off) but one who arrived for his latest audition this week and has seemed industrious and readier to contribute this time around.

Reimer and Aulie are kids, Crabb and Rosehill are retreads, Boyce is something in between. Reimer is the only one with a chance to be a star, but there's a grittiness to the rest that has to be compelling to Leaf fans.

Boyce expressed this physically in recent days when he had his face re-arranged by the camera hole in the glass at the ACC and barely missed a shift, let alone a game. At 26, he's never to going to land a big NHL pay cheque, but all he does is try and try some more, just like Crabb, and that's infectious. Crabb potted a gorgeous shortie against the Sabres on Wednesday - the game-winner no less - and has been among the most versatile of Leaf forwards this season, skating in everything from first line to checking roles.

Rosehill's obviously not a pivotal player, but when Colton Orr went down, Rosehill stepped in, and while he can't dance like Orr, he's a better player with better skating and hitting ability.

Dallas Eakins, the Marlie coach, is just starting out, but it's fair to say he's impressed all kinds of people with his work this season. These callups, for the most part, have arrived ready to play, and it could be that Nazem Kadri will too if Eakins is given some more time to work with him.

With J.S. Giguere limping off again Wednesday night with his ongoing groin problem, Reimer may have to carry the load for a while. With Giguere possibly out, Leaf fans might have got their first look at Jussi Rynnas, with Jonas Gustavsson now recovering from his third heart procedure in 18 months. The Leafs can downplay these procedures all they want, but at the very least they have set back Gustavsson in his training and development, and it would be hard to stick him in their now with the parent club.

At any rate, Rynnas isn't available either for the conceivable future because of a broken finger. So a position of Leaf depth is rather thin at the moment.

At 6-2-1 in their last nine games, and with very winnable games coming up against Ottawa and the Islanders, the Leafs have an undeniable chance to at the very least insert themselves into the playoff conversation. A helpful schedule of late and a weak Eastern Conference have clearly helped, but it's also true that back-to-back road wins in Boston and Buffalo are serious accomplishments, while a 3-0 victory two weeks ago on home ice against Carolina was Toronto's best performance of the year and showed potential most believe this team didn't have.

Interestingly, these callups haven't completely disabled the Marlies. A win over Manitoba on Wednesday gave them four wins in six games, and 25-year-old Ryan Hamilton potted a hat trick while Ben Scrivens got the win in goal. Kadri has 29 points in 30 games. Maybe Hamilton will be the next to get a try with the big club. Maybe Scrivens might get the call, if one is necessary, instead of the digit-damaged Rynnas.

Point is, there's help available with the Marlies. It's been the case all season.

 

 

 

 

 

And The Next Contestant Is. . . .

Wonder what, exactly, an NHL team can get for a third round pick these day?

Leaf GM Brian Burke sounded pretty confident Monday night that he can flip the third rounder he received as part of the package for Kris Versteeg and get some immediate help, and not some over-the-hill veteran, either.

We shall watch and learn. 

Until that happens, it's pretty clear Clarke MacArthur and Tomas Kaberle are going to command most of the attention as far as Leafs possibly heading out of town before the Feb. 28th trade deadline.

Kaberle, well, we've been over and over and over that one, haven't we? Even if he does waive his no trade rather than mimic Mats Sundin and the rest of the long-departed Muskoka Five, it's not like he's going to reap an enormous harvest if he's dealt.

For starters, he's a rental. Second, he's the regular point man on the 24th best power play in hockey. Third, he doesn't have a big shot, which allows teams to play well off him. He's not having a great year. Decent to pretty good, sure, but nothing extraordinary. Finally, he's looking for a big, new contract, something that's going to pay him in excess of $5 million per season, probably on the east coast.

This is not an extraordinary deadline commodity. And he may not waive his no-trade anyway.

Please just let this be over. Personally, I'd prefer another Peter Forsberg comeback to another round of Kaberle trade speculation.

MacArthur's a different animal. The Leafs want to keep him. More to the point, they want to re-sign him, probably to a two- or three-year deal, probably something along the lines of Nik Kulemin's contract.

The two sides are talking now, with MacArthur having apparently dumped his old agent in favour of Don Meehan of Newport Sports. Meehan's a dealmaker, always has been, so the guessing is that by the 28th there's a new deal for MacArthur.

But if it doesn't look like that will happen, the Leafs will move him. In other words, there's either 13 days to get a new contract in place, or MacArthur will almost certainly be on the move. With a salary of $1.1 million this season, and with the winger set to be only a restricted free agent this summer after being unrestricted last season, he's probably a more attractive commodity than Kaberle.

And who would have thought that in September?

 

 

 

 

A 230 KPH Shot in the Arm

Sometime a win is just a win. Sometimes it's more.

In the case of Milos Raonic's victory Sunday in San Jose, it's only the biggest shot in the arm for Canadian tennis in at least 15 years. Proclaimed by Patrick McEnroe at the Australian Open last month as "maybe the next big thing in men's tennis," Raonic's blistering serve carried him past Fernando Verdasco of Spain and to his first ATP victory.

Greg Rusedski was the last Canadian to win a tournament, and soon after he cashed in his talent for British citizenship, so it's hard to count much of what Rusedski did as anything that contributed to Canadian tennis.

Raonic may indeed be the real deal. Winning any event in men's pro tennis today is nothing to sneeze at, given the remarkable depth of the men's game in the modern era, the raw physical nature of the sport these days and the heavy travel demands. Those not in the top 20 don't get all the perqs the top players get, from massage therapists to preferred hotels to convenient scheduling, so winning San Jose was an enormous achievement for the Thornhill-raised Raonic.

Canadian tennis has been waiting a long time for someone like this. Young and articulate with loads of promise, Raonic's cannon-like serve is the stuff of which tennis stars are made. The most popular American player in the post-Agassi, post-Sampras era has been Andy Roddick, who built his game almost totally around his spectacular serve, only adding other elements later.

There are big servers on the tour who don't have much more than that - 6-foot-10 Ivo Karlovic comes to mind - but it would appear Raonic has other compelling elements to his game, including a big forehand that allows him to dictate play and an ability and willingness to come in and play at the net.

The great news is that he's given the country a tennis player to watch, at least for this year. Wimbledon is made for those who can serve and volley, so he'll be worth watching there in June.

At the same time, it's important to put Raonic's Silicon Valley triumph in some perspective so as not to exaggerate it.

This may be the most diluted portion of the men's tennis season, and last week there were no fewer than three ATP tour events, including San Jose, one in Rotterdam and another in Brazil. The world's top three players - Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Australian Open champ Novak Djokovic - played in none of them. The San Jose tourney featured only one top 10 player - Fernando Verdasco, beaten by Raonic in the final - and three players currently ranked in the top 20. The fourth-seeded player was Xavier Malisse, currently ranked 45th in the world.

Robin Soderling, the world's No. 4 player, won the Rotterdam tournament, one that had much deeper draw than San Jose and is the bigger event of the two. Nicolas Almagro won on clay in Brazil as the talent on the tour was spread thinly across the globe.

This week, there are three more events in Marseile, Memphis and Buenos Aires. Not only are there too many tour events - players have been complaining about this for years - but too often overlapping events dilute the product.

None of this should take away from Raonic's win. Capturing this tournament was the next logical step in a career that appears to be bursting with promise, and beating Malisse, Verdasco and James Blake demonstrated he could not only defeat experienced tour veterans, but ones with very different kinds of games.

Winning a tournament like this allows him to pile up some points, improve his seeding at future events and continue his drive towards the top 20.

The next step? Following up San Jose with another strong effort in Memphis, a tournament that ranks below Masters events like the Rogers Cup but above the San Jose tourney. What separates the top players from the rest is their ability to put together consistent results That's Raonic's next challenge.

But a win is a win. And this was no ordinary win.

 

 

Not a Statue in Sight

Let's get the nonsense out of the way immediately.

Checked out newspapers, websites and TV highlight reels this morning. Not a single person mentioned "building a statue" in honor of James Reimer, let alone putting him in the Hall of Fame or starting to prepare a screenplay on his life in hockey.

Did read and hear and see lots of mentions about how Reimer got his first NHL shutout last night against Carolina, about how he has played very well now that the Leafs have gone through pretty much every other goaltending option, about how he's a nice young man and how nine games do not a goaltending career make.

So when you hear Ron Wilson start whining about how media coverage in Toronto is ruining Reimer, about how people over-react to everything, remember that wasn't the case at all, that instead most people have a measured response to watching a fourth round pick become the Leafs best goalie at the moment.

When you hear Wilson start blaming "you guys" in the media, take it for what it is, the coach who can't handle the heat in Toronto blaming the people he blames for everything.

Second, two wins, and yet not a mention about how the Leafs are going to win the Stanley Cup this spring. Or next spring. Or the spring after that.

So when the clever folks among you snort "Start planning the parade" when the Leafs come up in conversation, remember nobody in the media and only the silliest of fans are saying such a thing.

Seems people are pretty grounded about the prospects for this hockey club around here.

A few more hockey thoughts before heading off for eight days in the sun.

Just because Reimer looks pretty darn good right now doesn't mean its time to trade Jonas Gustavsson. Patience, people. Don't forget, there were so many in the fall who thought the Leafs had one of the best bluelines in the NHL and imagined part of that defence corps could be traded away to bring back something big in return. What you want to do is build depth, and right now the Leafs appear to be building depth in goal and on defence. Hold on to as much of that depth and add to it.

Sure looks like Phil Kessel wasn't bothered one tiny bit by being taken last in the all-star draft. In his first two games back, he's been the most dynamic player on the ice for either team. While I understand there are those that have already decided that Tyler Seguin (eight goals, nine assists in his first 50 NHL games) and a player to be selected likely to be selected in the top 10 of this spring's NHL draft already add up to more than Kessel, I'm still thinking its worth waiting to see how this turns out. Players in Toronto seem to get either over-rated or criticized to the point their value is barely recognized, but the truth on Kessel is that he is a winger with explosive speed who can do things offensively that only a small number of players in this league can do.

It doesn't make him Rocket Richard. But he's also more than nothing, which is what many would have you believe the Leafs got in that deal.

Next, interesting to see the Edmonton Oilers have slipped into dead last again. Guess they've got their sights set on Gabriel Landeskog, likely the top pick in the June entry draft. But let's make a date for Jan., 2014. Only then, really, will we have any real evidence on whether the Oilers are doing their rebuild correctly or whether Brian Burke has done a better job with different ideas in Toronto. Like the Kessel trade, you're just going to have to wait and let this play out. In Edmonton, I see Taylor Hall with a good chance to be a 35-40 goal scorer in the NHL, a couple of exciting prospect in Jordan Eberle and Magnus Paajarvi and then a bunch of holes that need to be filled by a team that is rated the second least attractive club to be part of in the NHL in a recent survey by NHL players.

The Oilers may indeed be on course for a championship. But there's tons of work to do, and right now, they're significantly worse than the Leafs, who have a similarly youthful team with more kids (Keith Aulie, Nazem Kadri, Brad Ross, Jerry D'Amigo etc) possibly on the way. Edmonton has high hopes for Curtis Hamilton, Tyler Pitlick and Anton Lander, among others. It's impossible to forecast right now which team has the better kids, although Hall is certainly the top blue-chipper in either organization. That said, the gulf that some would have you believe exists between the rebuilding approach of the Oilers and the Leafs is theoretical, at best. The St. Louis Blues have gone about their business in the same way as the Oilers, including picking defenceman Erik Johnson first overall in '06, and right now their rebuilding efforts are barely ahead of Toronto's.

Fact is, whether you're talking the Oilers, Leafs or Blues, nobody really knows which club is really on the right track. There are just too many variables.