For the last three months the Toronto and Canadian sports media have been building and driving the ‘Burke or Bust’ Bandwagon and recklessly swerving it about town like drunken sailors on shore leave. 

The same people that were ratcheting up the expectations of how great it was going to be to have him, are now the same group of giggling teenage girls that are talking about how loyal he to stay, and how he was never really coming here anyway.  

Let’s lay some cards down on the table: My name is Sean and I am a Toronto Maple Leafs fan.
(It helps the pain if I say it out loud.) 
I, like every other Leafs fan, am an addict.  Our addiction does not come at the point of a needle, or the bottom of a glass.  No.  Our addiction is in the constant ingestion of promises and rumor concerning what has now become the worst best franchise in the history of sport…

We sit by our laptops frantically refreshing web pages in the hopes that in the last 3 minutes someone somewhere has decided to come and save us from what has become a Dali-esque nightmare from which there is no escape. 

Until last week, that person was Brian Burke.

I bought into it, just like everybody else.  He was going to fly in on a Brinks truck full of money and tell Brian McCabe that he was not going to have to buy skates this season.  He was going to load a twelve gauge shotgun and take Raycroft behind the ACC and put him down like the donkey he is.  He was going to tell the MLSE that hockey is not an investment, hockey is a drug and these people need a fix!

It’s OK though,  I will continue to inject whatever they sell.  I will tap my veins, I will drink their Kool-Aid, because I am an addict.  The problem is I am chasing a high that I have never felt before.  My generation of Leafaholics does not know the euphoric gasp of victory.  We are suffering through the pains of withdrawal without really knowing what we are coming down off of.

Imagine being a heroin addict in the 60’s; slamming smack for a decade.  Now imagine a 50 year come down that would make a stung out tranny look well put together.  That is what it is like.  

Brian Burke was going to be our fix, and like any good junkie we enjoyed the anticipation of the high as much as pushing in the plunger.  Just as the dealer was about to come into our lives the DEA busted in. 
But don’t worry about us.  Good junkies never have just one dealer.  We never have just one source.  Our drug is the promise of victory, our syringe is the endless flow of rumor and information.  And I have it on good authority that there is a Swedish kid coming to town.  So tighten those belts with your teeth kids, and stay tuned.  It could happen any minute.

To help clarify as well as commemorate Toronto Maple Leaf Fan-dom, here’s 3 of the Worst Best Moves Ever!
 
1) On October 16, 1989 the Toronto Maple Leafs traded their 3rd overall pick to the New Jersey Devils for Tom Kurvers.

The 3rd pick ended up being Scott Niedermayer.

2) New York Islanders traded Wendel Clark, Mathieu Schneider and D.J. Smith to the Toronto Maple Leafs for Darby Hendrickson, Sean Haggerty, Kenny Jonsson and 1st round selection (Roberto Luongo) in 1997.

3) Russ Courtnall was traded from the Leafs to the Canadians for John Kordic…Straight up.  Kordic ended up overdosing on cocaine and alcohol several months later while handcuffed to a bed outside Quebec City.  The under-aged hooker he was with called it in.

[Written by new HofS contributer Sean Murphy, if you have any questions for Sean, please F**k off.]