Leafs Fire Burke Days Before Training Camp Set to Start

Just as the NHL owners are meeting to ratify the memorandum of understanding to end the lockout and get the league going after 113 days, the Toronto Maple Leafs brain trust has made a significant move. Brian Burke has been dismissed as general manager and replaced by Dave Nonis.

If that triggers a feeling of deja vu, it’s no surprise. The Vancouver Canucks did exactly the same thing in 2004, and now Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment’s head honcho, Tom Anselmi, saw fit to do likewise.

“There’s no good time to do this,” Anselmi said in a press conference on Wednesday. “The relationship between a general manager and ownership is a very complex and different relationship … it has to work, long-term. And if it’s decided that it’s not going to work long-term, you’re best to deal with it expeditiously.”

Anselmi noted Burke will be kept on, for now, in an “advisory position” but pointed out Burke will have “no role in hockey operations.” In other words, Burke will be kept on until he can find a job either in the league office — where he’s worked before — or with another club.

How much Burke will actually be removed from the position going forward, until he goes elsewhere, is a matter of some conjecture. It’s no secret that Nonis is Burke’s protege and has been connected to him since 1998, when Burke hired him to be senior vice-president and director of hockey operations for the Canucks. The two have been joined at the hip ever since: when Nonis got his walking papers in 2008, Burke brought him on with the Anaheim Ducks, where Burke had been appointed the GM after being let go by Vancouver.

According to some pundits, the big issue is the timing of the decision, coming as it did mere days before the tentative start of training camp and the projected start date of league play on Saturday, Jan. 19. Frankly, no one should wonder about it. The axe had to fall at some point, seeing as how Burke had managed to guide the Leafs to no playoffs in his four-year tenure. Fans of the Blue and White had shown much truculence and pugnacity in calling for Burke’s head.

Now Nonis is the 14th general manager of the venerable team, charged with doing what his mentor could not: lead Toronto to the “promised land” of the postseason. By the way, one of Nonis’s most notable achievements during his time with the Canucks was to trade for a goaltender who would go on to help Vancouver to some of its greatest successes as a franchise — of course, that goalie is Roberto Luongo. Will Nonis do the same thing and pull the trigger on a trade to bring Bobby Lu to Hogtown? Stay tuned.