Just Lose, Baby!!

This evening, the Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Ottawa Senators in overtime, 4-3. Pavel Kubina potted his second of the night off a 3 on 2 rush to give the Buds their 4th straight win.

This result is important for Leafs Nation because Toronto is "battling" with Ottawa for mediocrity in the cellar of the NHL standings, and another Leafs win moves Toronto further and further away from the possibility of a number 1 pick.

The Leafs' fans who are cheering for losses by their team certainly had high hopes entering tonight's game - head coach Ron Wilson started Curtis Joseph for the first time since January 1, possibly suggesting Toronto is tanking games like this in order to improve their chances at the "next, next one", John Tavares.

Only in Toronto.

Only in Canada's largest city could losing be seen as winning. You see, this way, when the Leafs win, fans can be happy and when the Leafs lose, fans can say "at least this improves our draft position."

This line of thinking - particularly in the Leafs organization itself, which has no reason to deflect this type of thinking, as seats get sold regardless - is dangerous for a city which badly needs a championship by its most important franchise.

When one looks at the best teams of the last dozen years - Detroit, San Jose, Colorado, Pittsburgh, New Jersey - one can see (with the exception of Pittsburgh) that #1 picks are not necessarily important to their success.

Detroit is successful because it finds gems such as Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg in the later rounds. San Jose is successful because it develops its young players over many years, keeping their team in the running every season.

If the Leafs truly wanted to position themselves as a team in search of multiple winning campaigns, their focus would be on whom to draft in the 4th and 5th rounds and developing said players, rather than rolling the dice for Tavares.

Maybe the Brian Burke era will do this, I don't know. But losing begets losing, and hoping to finish 14th instead of 10th does nothing to the morale of the young players in your locker room now who need to learn how to win and how to improve.

1 Down, 103 To Go

After Sports Illustrated reported that Alex Rodriguez used performance-enhancing drugs (a term so popular now, the acronym PED is commonplace), the greatest current baseball player admitted that, yes, this leaked report was correct, and yes, he took PED's while playing for Texas from 2001 to 2003.

A-Rod (or A-Fraud, or A-Roid, or just, you know...Alex) certainly has learned from his juiced predecessors. After a few hours of angst, the public and media largely forgave Jason Giambi, Andy Pettitte and Jose Canseco for their admitted drug use. The reception for those players who have denied similar evidence, namely Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, hasn't been as receptive.

The question still remains, though: Why was Alex Rodriguez's name the only one of 104 from this list of "cheaters" that was leaked to SI? Why is pitcher/blogger Curt Schilling the only person bringing this up nationally?

There are 104 baseball players who took PED's before baseball make them illegal. It's time for the less-famous names to be released, so those who bemoan players like Bonds, Clemens, and now Rodriguez, will release steroid use in baseball was a wide-spread problem not limited to superstars.

Once that happens, maybe we can all move on.