In this book, Al Strachan chronicles the horror that is the Toronto Maple Leafs. Whether it's blowing a chance to have Wayne Gretzky as a player (unbelievable), Scotty Bowman as part of management (amazing) or Don Cherry as a coach (OK, that wasn't such a bad outcome), the Leafs have, time and again, chosen poorly.
The scouting team and drafting choices of the Leafs have also been abysmal. Here are just some of the players that the Leafs overlooked in the draft over the past 30 years: Bobby Clarke, Billy Smith, Bryan Trottier Mike Bossy, Darryl Sutter, Jarri Jurri, Grant Fuhr, Dominik Hasek, Luc Robitaille, Joe Nieuwendyk, Joe Sakic, Teemu Selanne, Martin Brodeur, Scott Niedermayer, Saku Koivu, Evgeni Nabokov, Miikka Kiprusoff, Zdeno Chara and Martin Havlat .
How would things have been different for the Leafs if they had picked one or more of these players in the draft? Considering how incompetent the Leafs have been with trades, they probably would have traded them for a 32-year-old over the hill player!
By the end of the book I felt something that I had never felt before for Leafs fans, namely, pity. For how can you be angry at a group of people who been abused, kicked down, laughed at and treated like garbage by their own team for so long. Which made me ask yet again, why does anybody cheer for Toronto?
3 1/2 out of 5 stars
