- Hope Smoke: Ron Wilson on TSN 1050 Radio: “It’s always shocking when a coach gets fired, especially one with a winning record” … “Early on in your career you don’t feel it coming, but later on & in my year with the Leafs I felt it coming” … “I never really saw any evidence of the Leafs being committed being to D & I’ve watched almost every game this year” … “That’s why Randy got fired. A total lack of consistency.” … “I think the way to fix that is to trade players.” … “I don’t think they will right now bc I don’t think there are a lot of trading partners for a lot of these players.” … “Some of these core players have failed under two or three coaches, so it’s got to be the player’s fault.” … “you’d have to surmise that some of them are uncoachable” … “You never change a leopard’s spots. I think you paint over a few but they’ll eventually shine through the paint” … “I think you can win with Kessel. He shows obvious signs of brilliance throughout the year” … “Phil’s problem & I think it’s pretty much how Phil’s been his whole career is two weeks on & two weeks off” … “You can’t rely on Phil. It’s just the way he is. Comes & goes & he gets emotional. It effects his game & relationship with players” … “I kind of think, the proof is in the pudding. Phil’s very emotional. When things are going great everyone loves playing with him & when he isn’t playing great he’s a hard guy to get on board on your side.” … “I guess Phil’s been in this funk for a couple of weeks, so he’ll snap out of it soon & the Leafs will be better for it” … “it would take a coach with pretty big balls to do that. There are only a few coaches out there willing to bench Phil” … “I think the fear comes from mgmt & losing a game because you benched Phil or somebody.” … “In knowing Dave the way I know him, I don’t think Dave would ever micro manage the coaches.” … “I never, ever suspected Burkie & now Nonis as someone who micro manage.” … “It was a strange moving replacing Randy’s assistants & something I had to do as well. Strange situation for both of us.” … “I brought in assistants who I thought were compatible but were suggested to me & 3-4 months later I was gone” … “Trust me, I thought I could make a difference & seriously I saw that I couldn’t” … “Everyone thinks that they can turn a team around given enough time & that’s how I felt coming in here. 3-4 years was enough time” … “I think it got better and we improved every year but we didn’t improve enough”
- Hope Smoke: Doug MacLean on Sportsnet: “I don’t believe for a minute that Randy believed in the core of this team & most people around hockey don’t” … “For me Randy is paying the price for a lack of personnel”
- Hope Smoke: Nick Kypreos on Sportsnet: “Randy didn’t believe in this leadership group and he made it abundantly clear to management”
- Nichols on Hockey: Darren Dreger on TSN 1050 radio on the Leafs and Cody Franson.
“No official update in terms of getting into the hard negotiations, but you know it’s just a matter of time and that has to get going. As poor as the Toronto defence has been, it’s hard to imagine that they’re going to be better without Cody Franson. But put yourself in Cody Franson’s shoes. He’s had a couple of real ugly negotiations, I think that’s fair to describe, with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
“I would that say he’s having an okay season, not a great year, but he’s a right-shot defenseman with some size. Some are questioning how mobile he might be and how often he shoots, but that’s fine. When you’re going into unrestricted free agency, you don’t just look at how great you are. You look at reasons to bring that dollar figure down, and I’m sure that Toronto has assembled that list, as other teams have as well, as they look to July.
“But Franson is no dummy. He recognizes there’s an opportunity here. And he’s going to say all the right things to the media. Of course he is. ‘I want to stay in Toronto. I love this city. I love my teammates.’ All of those things. And perhaps he does. But he’d be a poor businessman if he didn’t negotiate really, really hard knowing there’s a good chance he’ll probably pull in, what, $5 million per year as an unrestricted free agent? Toronto is going to have to make some moves if they think they’re going to afford that number.”
Dreger on the Leafs and their core.
“But what’ll be most interesting to me is whether or not management, Nonis and Shanahan, still believe in their core. And by ‘core,’ you know who we’re talking about. Obviously it starts, in some sense, with the captain Dion Phaneuf. And then swirls around that top line in Kessel, and Bozak, and James van Riemsdyk. Nazem Kadri’s name is always included in that. What’s going to become of Cody Franson.
“I mean, there’s a lot of things that this management tandem is going to have to come to grips with. If they don’t believe that you can win with that core, well what’s the point in holding on to them? Find a deal that makes sense. If you don’t get enough, and you probably won’t in-season, then certainly go into the offseason and onto the draft floor knowing that you’ve got to make some fairly significant changes to get this organization back on the right track. But is there a stomach to do that? That’s what we’re going to find out, and then we’ll find out whether or not Shanahan believes Dave Nonis is the right man to make that decision.”
