Half of this board's posts since his departure have been about the mess he left here. We are still looking for a solution to the lack of second line center. That was a problem created by Brian Burke.
We have Koivu who was decent enough the first two years he was here. But it was a problem Burke created that he had no real chance to address because he left the next year. Who knows if he does a better job than Murray at addressing it. In case people don't remember, McDonald was traded to accommodate Niedermayer coming back because we didn't have tagging room for his contract. I'm not justifying the return but Scott Niedermayer obviously takes priority over most roster players.
Take a look at the draft, sure Burke isn't the one doing the scouting, but he is the guy in charge of creating the framework for the team he wants to build, which is part of what we use to determine who the BPA is. If my math is right, Murray has drafted more Europeans in the last four years than Burke has in his last eight. Now, I know there are a few bigots that chime in from time to time around here that are okay with that, but I'm not of the same mindset that carving away a massive chunk of this league's talent pipeline is a smart idea.
Yeah, I agree with that, Burke has shied away from Europeans (other than using occasional low round picks on Swedish players) which is not the brightest way to go about things. He's completely shied away from Russians but he's not alone there.
The funny thing is that if you swapped the picks we've made since he left, I don't think there's any chance that he would have been fired for standing his ground on Luongo's contract, if the rumors are true at least.
Well we had 4 first rounders in '09 and '10 where as Toronto only had 1, so obviously swapping picks is going to make Toronto's prospect pool significantly better.
How many true centers has Burke drafted in the last eight years? The biggest problem we inherited from Burke's tenure just happens to be the same problem hounding the Leafs. I don't think that's a coincidence.
The biggest problem in Toronto is a 1C, which don't grow on trees, they're hard to acquire. From the 2C spot down, Toronto has been fine. Vancouver never had any issues down the middle (Burke drafted Sedin and Kesler btw) and we only had issues after the McDonald trade.
How about the players he has landed in trade? Well, notice how many of Burke's solutions revolve around ex-players of his from previous organizations. Burke has vision, but he has shown a tremendous lack of creativity in making that vision into a reality.
A good portion are. Plenty aren't though. Phaneuf, Kessel, Versteeg, Liles, Pronger, Moen, Beauchemin and many others weren't on his previous team
You are right, Burke deserves a lot of credit for the team we had in '07. I'm not going to dispute that. Nor should Bob get off the hook for all of his mistakes, but this rose tinted view of Burke's regime would look a bit different if he had stuck around.
