Welcome to LeafsAreTrash.com

We’d all love to see this team dismantled and sent out to scrap like the jalopy it is, but I think one thing not enough people touch on is that the problems facing this team go higher than the guys on the ice, higher than Paul Maurice, higher than John Ferguson Jr. and even higher than Richard Peddie. In fact every level of this organization is in a state of unrecoverable funk right up to the majority owners, the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan.

Sure the guys on the ice are the ones directly losing the game, and sure Maurice hasn’t shown he can improve a lesser team (something all great coaches can do), and JFJ is a bum, and Peddie is a moron. However, what are we to do when the majority owners are equally as awful as every branch of the tree stemming from them?

The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan is a nameless, faceless owner that the unfortunate reality is, has one goal and one goal only. They want to beef up their pension fund. They want a return on their investment. Anything on top of that is nice, but the fact of the matter is, the “owner” of this team doesn’t yearn for a championship, it yearns for a safe retirement.

The Leafs need an owner, who like a Steinbrener or a Cuban, is passionate about the sport, cares about the team and the fans, and desperately wants to win. These are guys who realize that they need to do whatever they can to make their teams as good as possible, and they attempt to do so. Hell, personally I’d rather have a guy like Chuck Wang from the Islanders. Sure, he’s an idiot, but at least he’s clearly trying his best to make sure his team has a solid future. In my eyes, there is no worse owner than one who doesn’t have a deep seeded, emotional interest in the team he owns. That is exactly the situation the Leafs are in.

Sure, the Teachers Pension and its benefactors and contributors would be very happy if the Leafs won the cup, but at the same time, they aren’t going to be upset if they don’t. As long as the investment keeps paying off. This is not an owner who would stick with a team through bad financial times because they were his baby. This is not an owner that would make risky moves that might crash and burn to give the team a chance to make it. This is an owner that just wants their dollar to bring in as many more dollars as possible. Nothing more. From their perspective, this team is a great success.

Most fans would agree that Richard Peddie is the wrong choice for CEO and has done a poor job. Most fans would say that Peddie should have no input into the hockey operations of the team and that the job should be left to someone with deep knowledge of the sport. Yet when the Teachers Pension Plan looks at Richard Peddie, they see a CEO who has tripled MLSE’s value in his time here (according to Forbes Magazine). With that kind of success why should anything change? It’s all about the money, and the money is good even if the team isn’t.

The unfortunate truth is, the Leafs are owned by a faceless group that has no effective emotional interest in the teams success on the ice. Only on the financial statements. Until that changes, the Leafs might be in for a long road of heartache ahead.

Stumble it!