The Norwegian Hobbit

CRIS BOURONCLE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Norway's forward Mats Zuccarello Aasen (48) vies for the puck against Swiss defenceman Mark Streit (7) during a game at the Vancouver Olympics.

So far, the Maple Leafs haven't made the same splash among NCAA free agents as they did last year other than signing Lake Superior State defenceman Simon Gysbers. In general, while the collegians are signing with various teams, there's a general sense the crop isn't as good this year.

Europe, however, may be a different matter.

The player coveted by six or more teams is Mats Zuccarello-Aasen, who many will remember as the diminutive forward who skated for Norway at the Vancouver Olympics wearing No. 48 and using an unusually long hockey stick. The Leafs are believed to be one of the teams in hot pursuit along with Detroit, Atlanta, Dallas, Edmonton and Chicago as this begins to turn into this year's version of the Fabian Brunnstrom Sweepstakes.

Some have nicknamed him MZA or the Norwegian Hobbit, and this week he was named the winner of the Yellow Helmet in the Swedish Elite League as MVP according to the players, a Swedish version of the Lester B. Pearson Award (which may yet be renamed the Ted Lindsay Award if the NHLPA ever gets its act together).

Zuccarello-Aasen 22, plays for Modo along with former NHLers Peter Forsberg, Markus Naslund, Niklas Sundstrom and Dan Hinote. The 5-foot-7, 160 pound centre/left winger led the entire league in scoring.

The Leafs are clearly more interested in adding size up front, but at the same time they're on the lookout for players skilled enough to play a top six forward role in the NHL. Zuccarello-Aasen showed both a combativeness during the Olympics and an ability to succeed on the smaller North American rink.

Of the remaining NCAA free agents, meanwhile, the Leafs also continue to have interest in 6-foot-5 Vermont Catamounts forward Brayden Irwin, a UCC grad and former Brampton Battalions forward who scored 15 goals in 38 games this season with Vermont.

Gysbers is a 6-foot-4 blueliner from Richmond Hill who has already played four games for the AHL Marlies.

Live hockey Q&A with Damien Cox

Damien held a live Q&A today at noon, answering readers' questions.

Captain in Waiting?

By the end of this season, barring injury, Dion Phaneuf will have 26 games as a Maple Leaf under his belt.

Whether that's a sufficient auction for Phaneuf to establish himself enough to become the club's next captain is up to Ron Wilson and Brian Burke.

It seems clear, however, that's what the Leaf braintrust are hoping for, that the 24-year-old Phaneuf is seizing the opportunity to quickly grab a leadership position within the dressing room to such an extent that Wilson and Burke would feel comfortable naming his as the club's first captain since Mats Sundin left at the conclusion of the 2007-08 season.

Wilson and Burke have repeatedly said there's no reason to name a new captain until there's a player worthy of the honor. Implicit in those comments was the suggestion that the players inherited by the two men when they arrived in Toronto six months apart were not worthy.

Well, most of those players are gone. In fact, only defenceman Tomas Kaberle remains from the pre-Wilson/Burke era — at least Kaberle's the only current member of the squad who had played NHL games for the Leafs before Wilson was hired in June, 2008.

The house-cleaning is essentially complete, although the futures of Kaberle (one year left on his contract), Nikolai Kulemin (a restricted free agent) and Mikhail Grabovski are uncertain, at best. Ditto for wildly overpaid rearguard Jeff Finger.

Clearly, the Leafs see Phaneuf as the logical candidate to give the team an official leader for the first time since Sundin left. He's been very solid since arriving nine games ago, and while the big blueliner is still looking for his first goal as a Leaf, he's made some big hits, been reliable defensively and shown an increasing willingness to jump into the rush.

How his personality will play out in the dressing room remains to be seen. Most describe him as gruff and blunt, and certainly vocal. After Nazem Kadri played a game recently for the Leafs as an emergency callup, the youngster was chatting with Wilson after the game when Phaneuf walked past, stopped, said something along the lines of "if you're going to be in camp next fall, you better show up in better shape" and marched on.

Talking that kind of talk could be a good thing for the Leafs and their captain-in-waiting as long as he can walk the walk on the ice and play the kind of hockey that allows others to follow.

If Phaneuf is introduced as the next captain of the team next fall — Sundin was 26 when he took the "C" for the 1997-98 season — he'll likely do so at the same time the club introduces a new set of uniforms.

The scuttlebutt in the industry is that the Leafs are seeking to alter their current home and away jerseys, adding a few more details, some piping and new personality to the uniforms that are among the dullest in the the league at the moment. The current uniforms were introduced after the lockout, while the club's best look remains it's third jersey, the predominantly white sweater with the vintage Leaf logo on the chest and blue shoulders.

Live hockey Q&A with Damien Cox

Damien Cox held a live Q&A earlier today, answering questions about all things hockey.

Hockey Q&A with Damien Cox

Damien Cox held a live Q&A at noon Monday, answering readers' questions about all things hockey -- especially the Leafs trade.

Kids and Goals

Only in Toronto, it's fair to say, does a 23-year-old rookie's first NHL goal get so much ink, plus radio and television coverage.

Good for Tyler Bozak. It was sure a beauty, one to tell the grandkids about. Of course, Leaf fans being Leaf fans, the debate today will now be whether Bozak where ranks with Syl Apps, Ted Kennedy and Darryl Sittler among all-time Leaf centres.

And how long after he retires will they put him into the Hall of Fame.

Things just get so exaggerated in Leaf-land, and that's both good and bad.

In the case of the 4-0 triumph over the Flyers, meanwhile, Bozak's goal, to me, was only the second most important one of the night off the stick of a young Leaf player. The most important? Well, that had to be Luke Schenn's early in the third period, and for a few reasons.

First, it stretched a 2-0 lead to 3-0 lead. Pretty much game over at that point.

But after such a difficult season for the 20-year-old blueliner, one in which he has seemed so lost so often, and frequently curiously awkward, it had to be a shot in the arm for both Schenn and Leaf management.

It was an expression of the possibility that there is more to Schenn's potential, possibly an offensive upside. He joined the 3-on-1 rush with Matt Stajan and Jay Rosehill, then instead of trying to make a extra play because he didn't have the confidence to take a shoot, he buried his second goal of the season into the Philly net.

His smile alone was worth a million bucks. No one expects him to become a prolific blueliner like Mike Green or Sergei Gonchar, but you like to see a player develop different parts of his game.

Schenn, of course, was the victim of precisely the hyperbolic response to making it to the NHL as an 18-year-old last year as Bozak will now experience after his terrific goal against the Flyers. Schenn has paid dearly for that exaggerated response to his rookie season in this, his second campaign.

He could probably give some good advice to Bozak right now. Don't listen to it, pal. It can change fast, and we both have lots to learn about being consistent, productive NHLers.

Enjoy the moment. Then put your head down, don't read the clippings and work on your game.

Hockey chat with Damien Cox

Damien held a live hockey Q&A today, fielding questions on the world juniors, the Olympics and the Leafs.

Apprenticeships in a Demanding Market

They are two stories from two different sports about two young people from two different countries.

Yet in some way, the circumstances are the same.

Both Phil Kessel and Alex Anthopolous have, by combination of their own choice and the decisions of others, been thrust into situations for which they aren't quite ready.

For the 22-year-old Kessel, it's to be a franchise player for the Maple Leafs. For the 32-year-old Anthopolous, its to run the baseball operations of the Blue Jays.

In today's Star, the pitfalls for both are reported on in pieces by Paul Hunter and Rich Griffin. Griffin highlights Anthopolous's efforts at his first ever winter meetings as he tries to not only take over from J.P. Ricciardi, but set a new tone for the franchise.

To me, he's reminiscent of John Ferguson Jr. when he took over the Leafs. He even has a quickee nickname as Ferguson did. Fergie was JFJ, while Anthopolous is Double-A, not exactly a comfy nickname for a baseball man.

Anthopolous is young, eager, hardworking, wildly inexperienced and very unsure of how to handle the Toronto media, which, as it was for Ferguson, could be a ticking time bomb.

Cutting guys off is okay if you win. But if you don't, you'll have no friends when you need 'em.

All that said, the good news is that Anthopolous isn't a finished product. He has time to learn. He has time to figure it out.

Kessel, meanwhile, again underperformed last night in a visit to his former hockey home of Boston. He was better, but not good enough, and the Leafs went down to defeat.

In some ways, Kessel right now is reminiscent of a young Mats Sundin, who, during his early days in Quebec City and then Toronto, was viewed as marvelously talented but unable to rise to the moment and compete harder when the environment became nastier.

Sundin ultimately conquered that and became a solid playoff warrior, but it took time.

But what people forget is that the Leafs didn't acquire a finished product when they traded for Kessel. They acquired a player with exciting offensive talent who has scored some goals in the league but has yet to prove he can grind it out when the compete level of everyone goes up.

That's okay. He has time to learn. He has time to figure it out. If this trade ultimately works out, it will be because Kessel improves as a player, not because he's all he can be right now.

The Leafs might want him to be a star, but at 22, he's at an age when only the truly exceptional - like Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin - are prepared to walk among the league's elite every night.

Everyone should understand that the plan for Kessel should be that he's really hitting his stride two or three seasons down the line.

One Hundred Games, Thirty-Seven Wins

The first 100 days of any U.S. presidency are often viewed as critical. The tone is set, the optimism from the election is still vibrant and there's a freshness to it all.

Maybe the same's the case for the first 100 games for an NHL coach with a team, a milestone Ron Wilson hit Saturday night with the Leafs against Calgary.

With another loss.

If you're keeping score at home, that's 63 losses for Wilson during his Leaf tenure against 37 triumphs. Of those 63 defeats, 18 have been through either overtime or a shootout.

Of a possible 200 points, Wilson has achieved 92 for a "winning" percentage of .460.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is not good. The optimism from Wilson's hiring is gone and it sure doesn't feel fresh.

The tone? Well, the idea was that a teacher was coming to town, a no-nonsense bench boss who would make sure everything, from defensive zone coverage to the laundry, was done correctly. Wilson spoke of a new culture, an end to any sense of entitlement players might have, something he called the blue-and-white disease.

Interesting, then, to hear Wilson discussing on Monday the need to start benching players who make major errors early in games and punishing players for egregious errors.

Shouldn't that have been happening, oh, 100 games earlier?

When Jason Blake didn't do much opening night on the backcheck to stop the winning goal in overtime by the Montreal Canadiens, nothing much happened. When Matt Stajan didn't get to the red line last Friday with the puck, took an icing call to force a group of exhausted Leafs to stay on the ice which resulted in a costly turnover by Luke Schenn, Stajan just kept on playing. There have been occasional instances in which players have been exiled to the press box to put on a big show, but within games, of late only Colton Orr seems to sit in third periods.

Right now, Wilson is safe, which means he's still got time to turn this thing around. In fact, he's probably got at least until early March, after the Olympics, when he'll be guiding Team U.S. under the management team led by Brian Burke, also his boss with the Leafs.

But even though Wilson has a long term contract, this losing, this consistent weak defensive play, can't go on forever. There are people out there right now who could take the helm - Craig MacTavish, even Wayne Gretzky - and there will be more at season's end.

After 100 games, Wilson's honeymoon is over. He's not in danger of losing his job anytime soon. That said, he's got to start winning some hockey games.

Monday Morning Considerations

Take solace, Toronto hockey fans, in the struggles of others.

Nobody expected the Maple Leafs to be a top Eastern Conference team, or one of the better NHL clubs overall. So when you look around for underachieving clubs, there are a few that, while better in the standings than Ron Wilson's crew, are just as much or more under the microscope for their results this season.

You can certainly start with Carolina, a conference finalist last year and a loser of nine straight to begin this season. Boston and Philadelphia are two clubs many mentioned as  teams capable of coming out of the east next spring, but neither has had a great start. The Bruins, at least, are dealing with multiple injuries.

Out west, the struggles of Detroit have been well-documented. St. Louis, which began the season in Europe with the Red Wings, have won only two of seven games at home. Many believed this would be an improved year for the Blues with Erik Johnson healthy and the team buoyed by a playoff appearance last spring, but not so far. Anaheim had a strong playoff last spring but can't seem to get it rolling this fall, at least partly because Ryan Getzlaf is having problems bouncing back from off-season surgery.

So while fans in this market tend to navel gaze a fair bit, there are a half-dozen or more other NHL cities in which the locals are getting restless.

* * * * *

That sound you hear is Steve Yzerman shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

After all, it's going to be tough enough to choose an Olympic team from the 46 players that were in Calgary in late summer for an orientation camp. What Yzerman doesn't need is players who weren't at the camp suddenly injecting themselves into the discussion.

That, however, is exactly what Steve Stamkos is doing. With 10 goals in 11 games, the Richmond Hill product is off to a sizzling start for Tampa Bay, with the Lightning in town tomorrow to face the Leafs. Stamkos may benefit in some way from the memories of '06 when Sidney Crosby was left off the Turin team because, basically, he was young.

If Stamkos continues at this pace, or has 25 goals by Christmas, it's going to be hard to keep him off the team. And one of his Tampa teammates, Vinny Lecavalier or Marty St. Louis, might be the player who gets bumped.

* * * * *

Poor Mother Russia. Its Olympic stars are falling like flies.

First Andrei Malkin Markov is lost for 3-4 months with a severe tendon injury. Then Ilya Kovalchuk suffers a broken foot. Then Evgeny Malkin falls to a shoulder injury. Then last night Alex Ovechkin leaves the game against Columbus with an "upper body" injury.

There's time for most, if not all of these players, to get healthy. But that's not always easy to do amidst the grind of an NHL season.

* * * * *

Awful to see Oakville's Ben Fanelli injured as he was on the weekend after a vicious hit by Erie Otters forward Mike Liambis, a native of Woodbridge. All thoughts and prayers are with the 16-year-old Fanelli as he deals with awful injuries in a Hamilton hospital.

But now OHL boss David Branch has a very difficult issue to deal with; should Liambis be suspended, and for a very long time?

All I've seen is some grainy TV replays of the incident, which occurred behind the Kitchener net. As Fanelli carried the puck in one way Liambis had the bomb doors open coming the other way.

Those hits never turn out well.

But it didn't look to be a charge or an elbow or a high stick. At the last moment, Fanelli turned to pass the puck the other way and the impact of the blow seemed to be from Liambis' right shoulder to the back of Fanelli's left shoulder. Fanelli's helmet popped off as though it was the cork from a champagne bottle, and that may have contributed to the injury.

It didn't look like a dirty play. But the injury is so severe it's hard to ignore.

This might be the most difficult such incident Branch has ever had to deal with as a junior hockey commissioner.

* * * * *

Funny that the NHLPA gang that orchestrated the ouster of Paul Kelly all essentially quit in concert last week after it was announced a committee would be investigating their activities.

Scared of a few questions, gentlemen? 

* * * * *

It was a perfect example of Brian Burke's Joe Schwartz theory.

Partway through Saturday's Leafs-Habs game, Jaroslav Spacek delivered a perfect suicide pass to teammate Glen Metropolit, and predictably Mike Komisarek delivered a very hard but clean check.

Now Metropolit is a good guy, a great story and a hardworking veteran. But he doesn't quite qualify either as one of Montreal's top skill players or core athletes.

Yet Komisarek, after delivering the hit, was immediately confronted by Kyle Chipchura and Travis Moen of the Habs.

Once upon a time, it was just the elite players who received this kind of support from teammates. Now it's anyone, or, as Burke says, everyone including Joe Schwartz.

Those who endorse fighting often accuses opponents of pugilism of trying to take the physical element out of the game.

However, it's becoming more and more evident that fighting is being used as a tool to eliminate hitting.