I expect them to be in the playoffs next year and contending for the cup in the near future.
The Leafs are also the the most valuable team in the NHL. http://www.forbes.com/nhl-valuations/
You can't be serious about that, can you? They usually make an expensive PR move every few years when it looks like they run the risk of fans keeping their money in their wallets, but don't often follow up with results.
Granted, Pat Burns got great results in 92/93 with a team full of scrubs when he took over the Leafs (don't get me started on that non-call on Gretzky in 92 that could have sent the Leafs to the finals), we haven't seen much legitimate excitement since then. Sure, the Leafs made a couple more semi-finals with Pat Quinn, but those were with significantly better teams, so much less of an achievement in my mind.
But the NHL is not the same as it was in the 90s. Everyone is bigger and faster, and the team hasn't had a legitimate superstar on the team in the way that Chicago or Pittsburgh has had for quite some time. And when they have had a superstar, that guy never had much help from the rest of the team. I don't think they've been legitimate contenders for a long, long time. The best that they've ever been is a "threat" or "dark horse".
While I've managed to "check out" on the Leafs for almost a decade now, I feel especially bad for longtime fans like my Dad, who year-in, year-out get set up with trumped up expectations for the Leafs only to be let down every single time. At least he witnessed them winning a cup before I was born though. And in two years, it's going to be half a century without a cup.
or is it simply a poor management issue?
There used to be - the financial goals of the Ontario Pension Plan (who owned a huge chunk of the team) ran counter to blowing huge amounts of money every year to increase the chances of winning a cup.
>> or is it simply a poor management issue?
Now that the pension plan is out, I think you can probably attribute the current state to a lot of bad decision making and not having a good long term plan.
seems if the teams current woes are mostly due to poor managment, hiring the best (or at least best paid) coach is a pretty good start, especially considering that they apparently gave him an 8 year leash
If you have a decent team, you're never going to get a Crosby or McDavid via the draft, so you have to at least have the semblance of trying to put a contender in place every year to be attractive to the best free agents.
In my mind, attractiveness to free agents is a combination of performance and an explicit willingness to spend money to fix shortcomings. Babcock, Kessel and Phaneuf are not enough (in my opinion) to make the Leafs a legit contender. They need at least two more elite players (including a top 3 goalie) to make that happen.
Can you imagine what would happen if the Leafs won a cup? The heads of the over 4 million people in the GTA would probably explode. And right after that, you'd have massive spending on merch, etc.
Well yeah, that'd be great if they were in the MLB where it's a Luxury Tax instead of a salary cap. But unfortunately they're a hockey team, and so are in the NHL where there's a salary cap. You can't, by league rules, simply spend more than the cap. So how exactly do you suggest they "spend like Steinbrenner"?
One tool they can use is the Injured Reserve, which allows GMs to backfill a long-term injury with players of equal or lesser value without contributing to the cap. This is what the Leafs' GM Nonis used to free up cap space by trading Clarkson to the Blue Jackets for Nathan Horton, for example. And even then Clarkson had to waive his no-trade clause (which he was classy enough to do).
You might call the salary cap a structural reason, in that unlike the Yankees/rich baseball teams, you can't really buy talent, you basically have to draft it. Not to say that teams aren't on an equal footing, but the Leafs might be in a very different spot with no cap.
Take Mike Babcock, who was recently hired as head coach. Because they weren't limited by the cap, the Leafs were able gave him an insanely high contract (more than twice the next highest paid coach in the league). Now imagine if they could spend like that on players.
The other non-internal factor that's often cited is the Toronto media. Leafs players are put under an enormous spotlight, and given way more scrutiny than any other team's players. This has sometimes lead to players not even wanting to play for Toronto.
Yeah it is the worst to be a fan of a very popular team that sells out when you are just fighting for 50% win rate.
That is a really good analogy.