JFJ

For those of you outside of "Leaf Nation" (again, I refer to "Leaf Nation" as the geographical area defined by television broadcast coverage), you may not be as familiar or well acquainted with good 'ol John Ferguson Jr. "JFJ", as they call him, has just recently been hired by TSN (my beloved sports network) as a guest analyst. Now, I love TSN. Really, I do. But some of their recent broadcaster acquisitions have me shaking my head. They started off their run of guest panelists with the "loveable" Tie Domi, former enforcer of the Maple Leafs. Yes, good idea. Let's ask a meathead enforcer what he thinks about hockey, because we know he's way up there in hockey IQ with Brian Burke and Bob McKenzie. Okay, so that didn't work out so well. Well, let's try our hand with another complete bonehead in Mike Milbury. Yes, the same Mike Milbury who made possibly some of the worst deals in NHL history. Let's ask him what he thinks about hockey, because he's clearly right up there with Tie Domi. Okay, so those first two haven't worked out quite so well. Hey, I've got a great idea! Let's hire John Ferguson Jr. The ex-GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Now, if you get fired as a GM from a hockey team, that's a pretty good indication that you're not doing a very good job, but if you get fired as the GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs, good GOD, stop what you're doing right now and try something else, because you clearly don't have the aptitude for this job. Now, I'm not saying that JFJ doesn't know anything about hockey, I'm just saying that he took a bad team, and made it even worse. Whether or not he knows anything about hockey, I'll leave that for you to decide. Incidentally, not only did he leave the team in shambles, but he gave half the guys he signed gigantic contracts, and then gave them No-Trade clauses so that they couldn't be moved. Just something to consider...

Now, as if hiring this dumbass as a guest analyist on the TSN panel wasn't enough, Hockey Canada, for reasons beyond me, have gone out and hired this guy as a scout for the 2010 team. Wait wait wait... Just a sec... Isn't this the same guy that gave Bryan McCabe a 7 million dollar long-term deal? Isn't this the same guy that's paying Pavel Kubina 4.5 million dollars a season? Isn't this the same guy that gave No-Trade clauses to all of his moveable assets, making it an uphill battle to acquire any kind of prospect or draft pick? Isn't this the same guy who's done absolutely nothing right since he became GM in 2003? Hm.. Maybe I'm thinking of a different John Ferguson Jr. Granted that he was left twisting in the wind by MLSE, made the fall guy of the entire franchise, and was finally fired after what seemed an eternity of inane bureacratic filibustering. Granted that, and feel sorry for him if you must, but he still didn't do a good job, and he still doesn't know anything about hockey. Please, if there's anyone from TSN or Hockey Canada reading this, please, please stop the insanity. This man has done nothing to merit his selection as a scout for Team Canada, and he has done or said nothing remotely intelligent to make anyone believe we should listen to what he thinks. He was brought on board the TSN panel to give a frank and unbiased GM's opinion about the trade deadline. What did he have to say? He said that if he was still in charge, the For Sale sign would be out, and that the Leafs need to recognize their opportunity and make a move, and that (quote):

I was preparing and making calls for six to eight weeks before January 22 when I was let go. Those discussions were well under way. You had to have that plan in place and we did.

That quote was directly from the TSN website (tsn.ca/nhl/news_story/?ID=229652&hubname=nhl) folks. There hasn't been any embellishment. He actually said that. Okay, so we know he can state the blatantly obvious. Is there anything else he does well? Until he proves otherwise, I'm going to go ahead and say, "No".