Brian Burke extended Ron Wilson's contract in late December in order to give his coach a vote of confidence and to remove the lame duck label from him. It was also a message to the dressing room. Well in hindsight the move was a complete failure. Wilson totally lost the dressing room just weeks after that. The media continued to criticize him. The fans were calling for his scalp.
Before the Christmas extension the Leafs' record was 18-13-4. With extension the team was a miserable 11-15-3. To underscore how he had lost the room, for the first time in my memory the team had absolutely no injuries. All the talk of distraction. It seems it was Wilson.
The strangest part of the affair is the rationale provided by Burke which we can all take with a grain of salt. He indicated that the heckling from fans made him fire Wilson. He couldn't "put him through that again." So Burke is suggesting that the fans fired Wilson. Only in Toronto.
No comments:
Post a Comment