Saturday Night's All Right for a Fight!

Ok, I read that Toronto will only retire a player's number for someone, "who have made a significant contribution to the Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey Club and have experienced a career-ending incident while a member of the Maple Leaf team", which means that the Maple Leafs are the only team in the NHL unwilling to retire a players number based on performance. Let me take a minute to laugh at that, please. Just another reason why everyone hates the Leafs. So, instead of retiring the number, the player get their number 'honored'. Whoopty-Doo! They have decided to honor Wendel Clark, which is the basis of my blog...

Seriously, this guy? Honored number? Things must really be desperate in leaf-nation to honor a possible draft bust. He was taken as the #1 overall selection in 1985 (ahead of names like Richter, Nieuwendyk and Larionov) and only scored 441 points in 13 seasons (give or take) with the blue shirts; that doesn't even rank in the top 10 of all-time Leafs. In comparison, Doug Weight played about as many games in an Oiler jersey, had 136 MORE points then Clark and was a captain.

	GP w/ Franchise	Goals	Assists	Points	PIM
Clarke	608	260	181	441	1567
Weight	588	157	420	577	527

Weeellllll now, maybe Edmonton should honor his jersey too. Are you stupid? Because that idea is. Weight was nothing more then a good player, which is more then I can say for Clark. He never won an individual award, only topped 60 points in a season twice and certainly didn't bring Lord Stanley's cup back to Toronto. I heard he was regarded as one of, if not the, best captains in Maple Leaf history: you have got to be shitting me, he was captain for 3 years, then they shipped his raggedy ass to Quebec for some role players and a guy named Sundin. They talk about Clark being a man playing against boys... yea, a fragile man. He played 793 games in 15 NHL seasons, that's about 52 games per year, do you know what we call that in today's NHL? Injury-prone. Frail. Brittle. European. Just kidding on that last one, Europeans usually play smart, Wendel didn't do that.

Wendel once had a 271 PIM season that I would like to attempt to breakdown by guessing he had (about) 20 fights that year with (maybe) 10 fights being 10 minute-misconducts and (possibly) 10 being the usual 5 minutes. That's (give-or-take) 150 PIM dedicated to only fighting, okay I can't really live with that but lets pretend I can. What is up with the other 121 PIM?! That's 60 penalties for hooking, holding, slashing, high sticking etc... And he played 80 games that year, so basically, the coach knew he would have to kill off at least one Wendel Clark penalty every night. I thought leaders were supposed to show discipline? Guess not. Heck, I would much rather have had the next 2 guys AFTER Clark as my captain (some guys named Dougie and Mats).

(Yea, that's right. That's Clark in an Isles jersey. That's about as much respect as he's going to get from me...)

And let's all be honest here, it was a nice gesture by the Leafs to give out free mustaches as souvenirs, but Wendel doesn't even have the best mustache in hockey! That distinction goes to Sidney Crosby's petefile playoff 'stache from last years cup run (Lanny MacDonald doesn't get credit here because he played for Calgary and Toronto, and losers like that don't belong in my blog).

Also, on a bit of a side note but still relating to Wendel, how horrible was his 'tribute night'? I think it might have took all of about 10 minutes for: the tribute video, his speech, the ceremonial puck drop and the anthems. There was no line of former Leaf teammates to congratulate him (I didn't see Gilmour, Zezel, Borschevsky, Gill or Ellett there to shake Clark's hand), no skate around the rink for the fans to see him. No ex-coaches or ex-captains. In fact, I think the video was longer than his speech. I'm used to the Oiler ceremonies where the get the all the 'boys' together, dress up the inductee in old gear, have him lap around the rink, score a goal, wave to the fans. Rod Phillips gives a speech about the inductee with Sather & Muckler, among others, in attendance. It's like a family or a community where everyone rallies behind each other and celebrates together. The Leafs just didn't give me that same feeling about their franchise.

The Leafs-Hawks game is over now because of three players making three key plays in succession: 1. Havlat keeps the play alive by circling behind the net and having patience with the puck to wait for his Dman to open up 2. Duncan Keith opens up, walks the blue-line then fires a perfect slap-pass down low to David Bolland 3. Bolland fights off the Dman, out waits Toskala to go down and slides a spinning backhand underneath him. Toronto probably should have won this game, but hey, that's what happens when you honor someone who doesn't deserve to be.

Cheers.
-Smith