From Damien Cox of the Toronto Star:
See, highly regarded hockey people have told the Leafs they need two to three years of painful losing, dumping high-priced veterans and accumulating high draft choices that will eventually put the club in a position to develop a championship-quality team.
But that’s not what Peddie, cleverly out of sight yesterday, wants to hear. He wants to hear that the Leafs can do next year what the Philadelphia Flyers did this year.
That’s why he’s fallen in love with Fletcher.
Fletcher’s a quick-fix guy, always has been since he left Calgary. He did a terrific quick fix in Toronto before it fell apart well shy of a Cup, participated in a silly charade with Jacques Demers in Tampa Bay for two years, was part of the Phoenix management group that foolishly thought it could quickly right all the wrongs with expensive, worn veterans and now, it seems likely, will try to do the same thing with the Leafs again.
But that’s not how it works.
Read the entire article here.
Leafs fans better hope Cox is wrong with all his “short-term solutions” comments, because if he isn’t, the Leafs could be in for another couple of seasons on the fringe of the 8th and final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference.
This team needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up and if I were a Leafs fans, I’d happily trade a year or two or three of struggles with young players, in order to contend for years to come.
