Thoughts on the Burke Dismissal

You couldn’t have expected any different than the casual reaction to Brian Burke being relieved of his duties as general manager.

Scoffing, mockery, some quip about golfing, or 45 years and counting, or some other shallow, generic anti-Leaf remark that we Leafs fans have grown accustomed to since the dawn of expansion.

Or, of course, comments about the Leafs’ performance under Burke, or the Kessel trade, or the Komisarek signing, or the Kessel trade, or his outrageously inaccurate predictions about the abilities of his roster, or… the Kessel trade.

While Burke, himself, refused to blame anything other than his hockey-related performance for his dismissal, it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to determine that there was more behind this sudden decision than Burke, or the MLSE board, is letting on.

This decision was personal, and that is what has bugged me enough to make my inaugural post on this site about the whole ordeal.

Obviously, one can look at Brian Burke’s transactions as general manager, and can look at the team’s record throughout his tenure, and can make a perfectly valid case for his dismissal.

Yes, the trade with the Bruins for Phil Kessel has been an endless string of slaps to the face of Leafs Nation.

Tyler Seguin looks to be a star centre – which, admittedly would have been useful to a team that hasn’t had a top-line centre of any value since Mats Sundin was pushed out of town.

But regardless of what you think of Dion Phaneuf and his ability – or lack there of – to be captain, take a long look at that trade with the Flames and tell me it wasn’t a steal.

Think back to how horrible Vesa Toskala was that season, and how much of a miracle it was that Burkie managed to get anything other than a bag of pucks – much less J.S. Giguere – in return for him; WHILE unloading the albatross of a contract that was Jason Blake in the process.

I’m not saying Burkie did a fantastic job, either.

Obviously, some of his decisions where goaltending is concerned have been questionable, to say the least.

Offering James Reimer a long-term contract after a promising run – during which the team was long-since out of the playoffs, and the rest of the league was mostly unfamiliar with him – was likely a mistake.

Jonas Gustavsson turned out to be a mistake, but one can blame a number of factors other than Burkie (ablations, Francois Allaire) for that outcome.

But it’s not like netminding has always been one of Burke’s strengths (see: Dan Cloutier).

Prior to Burke’s arrival in Toronto, the Marlies (or St. Johns Maple Leafs previously) never made headlines, much less the AHL Finals.

Regardless of the performance of the big club, this team (Kessel trade aside) is headed in the right direction.

While Burke and Ron Wilson are long-time friends, Wilson was Cliff Fletcher’s hire, not Burke’s.

This made it impossible for Burke to relieve Wilson, a coach whose run-and-gun style never truly meshed with Burke’s “belligerent, truculent” model, until things were at their absolute worst.

Last spring, Burke finally hired his coach in Randy Carlisle. He got all of 18 games to work with him.

Players that Burke brought in, such as James Van Riemsdyk, Matt Frattin, Nazem Kadri, Morgan Rielly, Stuart Percy, etc, will never get to fully show whether Burke’s judgement on their fit for the team was an accurate one.

Three-and-a-half years is not nearly enough time to evaluate a general manager’s performance, in my opinion.

And anyway, we know that the decision to axe him was not based on performance.

If it was, logic would dictate that he would have been relieved of his duties either during the collapse last spring, or at the conclusion of the campaign.

Or even at the end of this 48-game season, should the Leafs have failed to make the post-season once more.

No, this was a personal decision, and the tone of it could not have been more clear to me.

As Burke acknowledged, this decision came out of left field to him.

While no company is required to give a warning prior to dismissal, and while there is no easy way to let someone go, was it necessary to send him out to Russia to scout the World Juniors if a decision of this magnitude was on the horizon?

Was it necessary to make him sit and wait for the retched lockout to end, only to have his jubilance towards the long-awaited start of the season deflated by a sudden, and vaguely explained dismissal?

No, the Leafs don’t owe him anything. At least not by rule.

But how about by convention?

This is, after all, a man who has championed the cause for LGBTQ rights in sport, and did so in a city with one of the biggest Gay communities in the world.

A man who, without any hesitation, accepted his own homosexual son with nothing but love and respect.

This may seem like it should be the norm, but we’d all be naive to think it is; especially in the sporting community.

A man who continued to champion this cause, and barely missed a day on the job, after that same son perished in a tragic accident just weeks after coming out on national television.

Yes, Brian Burke has a no-nonsense, prickly persona to the media.

Yes, he told the Toronto Sun’s Steve Simmons this afternoon that the best part about losing his job is that he’d never have to talk to him again.

But Burkie is not a horrible person, and he has feelings – feelings that are likely more fragile than he’d ever let on to the media.

You can bet this is torture for the poor guy.

Burke called this job the “Vatican” of general managing jobs. A job that he took on with a number of huge promises that he was ultimately unable to fill.

That will haunt him for a long time.

In the mean time, Burkie stays on as a senior adviser to the MLSE board, and will not be involved in hockey-related decisions, as he admitted to thinking (and likely hoping) the job would entail.

Seeing as this would require him to advise the board that ultimately chose to dismiss him, based on his generally abrasive clash with corporate culture, and based on his attitude towards winning that MLSE (see: Raptors, Toronto FC) has shown consistent ineptitude towards…

Well, let’s take wagers as to which TV network scoops him up first.