A lot has been made of the Leafs GM situation this week. Now that Mr.Burke decided to stay another year in Anaheim, and screw up our Burke Countdown Head, basically every sports geek out there has put forth their two cents on who they think the best candidate is and who's available. I will be adding my own two cents on the matter as well. I wont state the one man who should get the job though. I'll be stating three guys, two obvious and one dark horse, who I think would be a great pick for the next GM of the Leafs.

Doug Armstrong



It's not very often I agree with one Pierre LeBrun. So Pierre, take time to print off this blog entry and post it up on your wall...I know you want to.

Seriously though, Armstrong hasn't gotten nearly enough credit for the job he did with the Stars when he took over in 2002. He was able to re-sign the team's core players: Morrow, Zubov, Lehtinen, Modano, and Turco to lower than market value contracts, $4 mil per season for Morrow...sign me up! He also made some nice trades: Ribeiro, Nagy (now with LA), Norstrom, Hagman and Barnes. He's also done a good job when it comes to the draft: Eriksson, Niskanen, Grossman, Fistric and Crombeen. Plus, Dallas made the playoffs in EVERY season under his watch, totaling 427 points in the regular seasons behind Ottawa and Detroit.

Oh, and he was also the Assistant GM under Bob Gainey in Dallas before he became their GM.

David Poile



Next to Risebrough in Minnesota, Poile is probably the most underrated GM in the NHL. He started out working for the Atlanta Flames and worked his way up to become the team's Assistant GM. After he accomplished that he took the biggest step in his career and moved on to Washington to become the team's Vice President & GM. He stayed with the Captials for 15 years and finished with a record of 140 games above .500. He then moved onto where he is now, Nashville, and literally built that team from the ground up. If it wasn't for ownership forcing him into the Forsberg deal and then making him shed payroll, the Predators would have been serious Cup contenders this season.

He's also buddies with Cliff which doesn't hurt his chances.

Bobby Clarke



Here's my dark horse that no one has talked about, except for Keith Jones.

I'm personally not a fan of Clarke. But, when you look at what he did with Philadelphia, it's hard to ignore just how smart he really is. He always made key moves helping the Flyers contend in the East year after year and the most underrated part of his game was drafting. He drafted some players such as: Fedoruk, Niittymaki, Gagne, Cechmanek (sucked in the playoffs but still put up good regular season numbers), Justin Williams, Pitkanen, Picard, Colin Fraser, Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, Downie and Giroux.

The best quality of Clarke however, just like Brian Burke, is that he isn't afraid to make ballsy moves to help improve the team. That, my friends, is something we desperately need so guys like Tucker and Kubina can finally go and the rebuild can officially start.


Take off,
Coco

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