In defense of the Leafs

First and foremost, everyone should know that I loathe the Toronto Maple Leafs. In every fiber of my soul, there's room to despise this team. But in the interest of fairness, I figured I should respond to a text sent to me after the Leafs signed Francois Beauchemin on Monday. That text read "I think we have our best blue line since Kaberle/McCabe." Now, that's not exactly a feat in and of itself. The Kaberle-McCabe era was good to the Leafs, but also included players like Aki Berg and Calle Johansson, Anders Eriksson and Robert Svehla, the list goes on and on. Since those "salad days," and since the lockout, the Leafs haven't made the playoffs-- their longest playoff drought since the league expanded beyond six teams. But there is reason to believe that drought will come to an end. Soon. With all due respect to the Dave Ellett, Todd Gill, Dmitri Mironov, Jamie Macoun era, and the Al Iafrate, Borje Salming era, I figure the 2009-2010 Maple Leafs defense corps is shaping up to be the best since the first time Bobby Baun patrolled the Toronto blue line. Led by the likes of Baun, Marcel Pronovost, Tim Horton and Carl Brewer, the Leafs won four Stanley Cups between 1962 and 1967. Of course, I'm not predicting that kind of success over the next six seasons, but I'd probably take this group of eight defensemen over any other team's top eight. Projecting the Leafs top pair as Tomas Kaberle and Mike Komisarek (a poor man's Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger); second pair as Beauchemin (direct understudy to Niedermayer and Pronger) and Luke Schenn; and a rotating cast of Jeff Finger, Mike Van Ryn, Garnet Exelby and Ian White rounding out the top six at any given time, the Leafs have a fantastic mix of speed, skill, and sandpaper. Kaberle, Van Ryn and Finger are all in the puck-moving mold. Komisarek, Exelby and White are known for their physical play. Beauchemin and Schenn are very balanced, but blossoming into high-end puck movers that can make life miserable for opposing forwards. This is still a team in flux that needs to sort out their goaltending, their powerplay, their faceoffs, and their overall offense. But the defense is set, and will not rest. So there, I said something nice about the Leafs. Oh, and you know I can't let you leave without mentioning Cory Cross in that dead-weight group from the Kaberle-McCabe days.