Last Saturday, I did something I had avoided since April – I watched a Leaf game on TV. The Jays game was over and it was raining outside, so this seemed like not a totally offensive option. My reaction was much the same as it was the last time I sat and watched them:
“My God, this is bad.”
There were positives, I suppose. They outshot a Red Wings team made up mostly of players I’d never heard of and several times I saw them attempt something that looked like a cycle, It brought back memories of Mikael Renberg, who would cheerfully abandon a clear-cut breakaway to go cycle in the corner for a period or two.
But nobody could score, which made me miss Phil Kessel all the more and notice the absence of the kids we drafted, some of whom are supposedly good at this sort of thing.
Their absence, of course, is progress.
In years gone by, our prospects that found themselves playing in the AHL were there because they likely weren’t all that good. Now, they’re there because that’s part of the process. They need seasoning. We are having patience. We are having process.
I am not inexperienced with the notion of process. Many years ago, when ISO 9000 was a big deal, I was one of the people tasked with getting our company certified. The ISO people, who were all very nice (they got paid whether we passed or not), told us repeatedly that certification meant simply that we had a process – not that said process was actually any good. “Remember,” they told us repeatedly, “Firestone (then famous for having a complicated relationship with Ford Explorers) is ISO-certified!” (My response of “then why in hell are we doing this?” typically went unanswered.)
Anyway, we got our certification, becoming the first dot-com so honoured. Three months later, when the company cratered, we did so comforted by the knowledge that should anyone be so stupid as to hand us more money, we could go bankrupt again in exactly the same manner. We had process.
Anyhow, Saturday was my first look at process as it applies to the Maple Leafs. Again, I am not against this. We’ve tried everything else andhaving a plan is actually kind of novel. This is waterfall development – old-school stuff. (Burke was agile, Don’t talk to me about agile.)
The only issue with waterfall is that it takes a good while before you see any results and have any real sense of whether what you are trying to develop is going to work. In the interim, it’s a lot of design docs and waiting, and this is what brings me to Terry Martin.
FIrst of all, nothing I say here is a slight on Terry Martin. I liked Terry Martin. He was a pretty good skater, worked hard and was the sort of player who could score 25 goals (maybe 15-17 in today’s currency) for a lousy team. He was one of my favourites from those early 80s teams that were constantly stockpiling (or, depending on your point of view, destroying) young players.
Terry had come to us from Buffalo just as the wheels were coming off the Sittler-era Leafs and hung around through the end of ’83-84, when his career was largely ended by what most people would have considered a stroke of tremendous luck. He was picked up from the Ballard Leafs by the dynasty-era Oilers, which would have been absolutely fantastic had they not been completely awash in wingers. He barely played. A mid-season move to Minnesota didn’t help matters and he finished up in the minors.
Terry Martin really was, to me, the sort of player you get on a team just like this one. He was likeable and you could cheer for him, but he was not going to be part of it when the team finally amounted to something. He’s the Arcobello or the Panik of the 80s – just an interim part of the process.
If only process were a tiny bit easier to actually watch. I think the old insult of “do you actually watch the games” will now become something of a badge of honour. “Wow – you really watch the games???”
My Little Leaf Space 