Number8
Registered User
- Oct 31, 2007
- 18,114
- 17,321
Burke is definitely a very nice person and has a huge heart. But being a nice person doesn't make you a great GM.
I think he underestimated the patience of Toronto fans. You don't improve a bottom-dweller by trading two (two! and a second!) first-round draft picks for a complementary piece like Phil Kessel. Not that Kessel is a bad player, but he's the type of guy a contending team adds to get over the top, not the type of guy a struggly team builds around.
I think that move put the Leafs in a huge hole and they have yet to recover.
I was speaking about him purely as a person.
I can see why TML did this from a hockey personnel perspective -- although I do think the timing is bizarre (assuming the rumored efforts to get/not get Luongo didn't force hands one way or the other).